Searching for Russia

[Note from the Saker: some of you did notice that I was not posting very much and that I was not replying to emails as much as I used to. Now I can confess: I was on a semi-confidential trip abroad in a locate with very spotty Internet access (slow, through my smartphone’s dataplan). I am now back and I will post a full report about this, and my latest appeal for support, either on Monday or Tuesday. Until then, please stay tuned. Kind regards and hugs to all, the Saker]

Whether one likes Russia or not, I think that everybody would agree that this country is really different, different in a profound and unique way. And there is some truth to that. One famous Russian author even wrote that “Russia cannot be understood rationally” (he used the expression “cannot be comprehended by the intellect”). Add to this already some rather eccentric politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovskii who is known to mix very rational and well-informed analyses with utter nonsense and you get the famous “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. Frankly, this is just some witty hyperbole, Russia is not that mysterious. She is, however, rather dramatically different from the west, central and east European countries and even though a big chunk of Russia lies inside the European continent west of the Urals, in civilizational terms she is far removed from the so-called “West”, especially the modern West.

For example, Russia never underwent any “Renaissance”. I would even argue that Russia never really underwent any Middle-Ages either since, being an heir to the East Roman Empire (aka Byzantium), Russian roots are in the Antiquity. While one could, arguably, describe the phases of western civilization as Middle-Ages -> Renaissance -> Modernity -> Contemporary era, in the case of Russia the sequence would be a much shorter Antiquity -> Modernity -> Contemporary era.

[Sidebar: you will notice that I did place the roots of the modern western civilization in the Middle-Ages, not in the antiquity. The reason for that is the fact that when the Franks finally conquered the western Roman Empire they destroyed it to such a degree that the era following the collapse of the western Roman Empire is called the “Dark Ages” (Russia, by the way, never went through this millennium of darkness and, hence, she never had any need for any “renaissance” or “re-birth”). Contrary to the official historical narrative, the current western civilization has never had any root into the Roman Empire, and even less so, the Greek antiquity. The true founders of the “western world” were, in so many ways, the Franks]

I would therefore argue that while geographically speaking Russia (at least the most populated part of her) is in Europe, culturally she has never shared a common history or, even less so, a common culture with the West. To say that Russia is “Asian” is also problematic for two crucial reasons: first, Russia, as a culture, was born from the Baptism of ancient “Rus” by Saint Vladimir in the late 10th century. The brand of Christianity received by Russia was Roman, not the Frankish one. I don’t believe that anybody would seriously argue that Rome or Byzantium were “Asian”. So the cultural and spiritual roots of Russia are not Asian. Ethnically speaking, most Russians are Slavs, mixed to various degrees with other ethnic groups. And though I personally find the category “White” of dubious analytical value, I don’t think that anybody would seriously argue that “Whites” are Asians. That leaves us with the Russian state, the Russian polity and here, yes, I would argue that it was the Asian Tatar-Mongol (an inaccurate and misleading term, but that is the commonly used one) invaders which created the modern Russian state. The complicating factor here is that since Russia became a western-style Empire under Peter I she has been ruled by a mostly westernized elite which had much more in common with the elites of western Europe than with the majority of the Russian people. Both the 18th and 19th century in Russia were marked by a ruthless, and often violent, imposition of western political, social, cultural and religious models by the Russian ruling elites upon the Russian masses. This is a complex and multifaceted process which saw many contradictory phenomena taking place and we can argue forever about it but what is certain is that this process ended in 1917 with a bourgeois (masonic) liberal coup d’etat, followed, eight months later, by a Communist takeover and a bloody civil war. While neither the February coup nor the Communist takeover in November were true “revolutions”, the year 1917, taken as a whole, saw an immense revolution take place: one ruling class was completely replaced by a completely different one.

I have neither the time nor intention here to discuss the Soviet period here, I have done so many times elsewhere, but I will only present my main conclusion here: there is no way to consider the Soviet period as a continuation of the pre-1917 Russia. Yes, geographically speaking the USSR more or less covered the previous Russian Empire and, yes, the population which lived in pre-1917 Russia continued to live in the new Soviet Union, but the roots of the dominant Bolshevik/Communist ideology in power were not found in ancient Russia and in the traditional Russian cultural, spiritual and religious values: there roots were imported from the West (just as the main leaders of the Bolshevik uprising for that matter). I would therefore argue that in 1917 one type of western elite (the aristocracy) was replaced by another type of western elite (the Communist Party) and that both of them were “imports” and not “Russian intellectual products”. I would even go further, and argue that the Russian people, culture and civilization have been persecuted for the last 300 years and that only with the arrival of Vladimir Putin at the helm of the Russian state did this persecution end.

Let me immediately clarify that these past three centuries were not uniform and that some periods were better for the Russian people and some worse. I would submit that the period when Petr Stolypin was Prime Minister (1906-1911) was probably the best time for Russia. The worst times for the Russia happened only six years later when the Lenin-Trotsky gang seized power and immediately began indulging in a genocidal campaign against everything and anything “Russian” in the cultural, spiritual or intellectual sense (this bloody orgy only abated in 1938). All in all, even with very strong variations, I believe that in a cultural and spiritual sense, the Russian nation was oppressed to various degrees roughly between 1666 and 1999. That is 333 years: a long period by any standards.

And then there is modern Russia, which I call “New Russia”. Clearly not the Russia of pre-1917, but not the Soviet Russia either. And yet, a Russia which, for the first time in three centuries, is finally in the process of gradually shaking off western cultural, political and socio-economic models and which is trying to re-establish what I call the “Russian civilizational realm”. Of course, we should not be naive here: Putin inherited a political system entirely created by US “advisers” whose sole purpose was to further oppress and exploit the Russian people. The human and economic costs of the Gorbachev and Eltsin years can only be compared to the effects of a major war. And yet, out of this horror, came a leader whose loyalty was solely to the Russian people and who set out to liberate Russia from her foreign oppressors. This process of “sovereignization” is far from completed and will probably take many years and go through many ups and downs, but it has undeniably been initiated and, for the first time in centuries, the ruler of the Kremlin is not somebody whom the West can hope to subdue or coopt.

Hence the hysterical paranoia about Putin and his evil Russkies.

The West is terrified by the very real risk that for the first time in 333 years Russia might become truly Russian again.

Scary thought indeed.

Consider the record of what we can call “oppressed Russia”. It began by the defeat by Peter I of one of the greatest European military power, Sweden, during the Great Northern War (1700-1721). If you are interested, take a look at this Wikipedia list of Russian wars between 1721 and 1917 and pay special attention to those wars listed as “defeat” for Russia and notice that with the exception of the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War and WWI Russia won all of her relevant/important wars (wars in which Russia played a major role or had a major stake). I personally would not consider that Russia lost the war against Japan (neither do Japanese historians, by the way), and in the case of WWI Russia basically self-destructed on the eve of victory. As for what I call the “Great Ecumenical War against Russia” (it united the Latins, the Anglicans and the Ottoman Muslims together), I would call it an “ugly draw” whose worst consequences for Russia were soon mitigated. Contrast this with the really important war, the Napoleonic aggression on Russia in which Russia single handedly defeated a coalition basically uniting all of Europe against Russia. Take a look at this photo of a monument at the location of the biggest battle of the war, the battle of Borodino, and check out the list of countries allied together against Russia:

That is 15 countries against Russia. There were fewer agressors during the “Great Ecunenical War” but three out of four of those aggressors were be not just countries, but entire empires: French Empire, British Empire, Ottoman Empire. Whether it is 15:1 countries of 3:1 empires, a pattern begins to emerge. And while during WWII only six countries participated in the initial invasion of the Soviet Union (Germany, Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia) in reality there were numerous more or less “volunteer” units which joined in.

European unity at its best indeed.

Each time Europe gathered all her forces to finally defeat, subdue, conquer and assimilate Russia, Russia prevailed and only got bigger and stronger. That despite being, in so many ways, a crippled Russia, torn apart by profound internal contradictions, ruled by an elites which the Russian masses found uninspiring at best. True, individual Czars during these years were truly popular, but the regime, the order, was hardly one I would consider as popular or representative of the worldview and culture of the Russian masses. And yet Russia won. Over and over. Despite being weak.

Some will say that this is the long gone past, that the world is different today, that nobody in Europe thinks about these wars. But this is not true. For one thing, every one of those wars was accompanied by a frenzied Russia-bashing campaign in the media and literature and all these wars were represented as fought in the name of lofty European values and against the barbaric hordes from the savage East. And in the years when Russia was not the object of a military attack she was always the object of economic sanctions under one pious pretext or another. King Solomon was right when he wrote “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun”. Gradually and insidiously, the hatred and fear of Russia became part of the western cultural identity. Considering how the West learned to fear a crippled and weakened Russia, can you imagine the terror a truly united Russia would inspire?

Do you know what Putin’s political party is called? “United Russia”, of course.

Keep in mind that during these years Russia was ruled by a hopelessly pro-Western elite and that every Russian ruler from Peter I to Dmitry Medvedev, with the exception of Alexander III and Joseph Stalin, wanted to be accepted as an equal partner by the West. But the western elites had no use for a partner or an ally, what they wanted was a compliant slave.

Vladimir Putin has made it quite clear that he has no such plans at all.

Speaking of Putin, there is something else in his rule which makes him quite unique: his real power does not come from the Russian Constitution or from the fact that he is the commander in chief of the Russian military, intelligence and security forces. If that were really the case, then the Russian elites, which are still largely pro-western, would have found a way to topple him a long time ago, with the assistance of Uncle Sam if needed. No, is real power is in the undeniable fact that the Russian people recognize him not only as their leader, but also as their representative, if you wish, at the helm of the Russian state and in international affairs. There is a personal trust, a personal political capital, that the Russian people have given Vladimir Putin which sets him aside from all other Russian political figures. This feeling is so strong that even a lot of former political opponents have now become his supporters and that those who still openly oppose him do that with a great deal of difficulty and personal discomfort.

This personal authority of Putin does not, however, extend to Medvedev or, even less so, to the Russian government. I would argue that the Russian government is largely unpopular, as is the Russian Duma, but the lack of viable alternatives to the power of the “United Russia” Party makes this lack of popularity almost irrelevant.

If we take the word “monarchy” in its original meaning as “power of one” and if we recall that many Czars were personally popular even when their regimes were not, we could say that Putin’s rule is a kind of very traditional Russian “neo-monarchy” and that Putin has found a way to combine the external forms of democracy with the internal characteristics of Russian monarchy. Interestingly, the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has decided to create a personal guard for Vladimir Putin (you can read about this here). In order to comply with the law, these personal guards all resigned their commission and offered their services to Vladimir Putin as a person, not to the Russian President.

Needless to say, the so-called “Russian experts” in the West dismiss it all as being sign of the Putin’s “authoritarian” rule and characterize him as a “strongman” at best and a “dictator” at worst. In truth, fear and hatred are very poor advisors and it is little wonder that they get it so wrong. But then, “Russian experts” are not paid to understand Russia, they are only paid to demonize her.

So where, or what, is Russia today?

At this point in time, I would say that Russia is both a promise and a process. As a promise, she is very vague, there are numerous different ideas of what “real Russia” was or should be. She is an ideal which is more perceived than understood. As a process, Russia is much more unambiguous: de-colonization, sovereignization, resistance and the unapologetic proclamation of a unique, different, civilizational model. The days when Russians were mindlessly aping the West are apparently truly over. Some say that the future of Russia is in the South (Caucasus, Central-Asia, Middle-East, Indian subcontinent), some see the future of Russia in the East (Siberia and Far East Asia, especially China) while some see it in the North (Siberia, again, and the Arctic).

But nobody sees it in the West any more.

Of course, this is not how many Europeans see Russia’s intentions. The Poles and the Balts, especially, keep themselves awake at night with nightmares featuring a Russian invasion of a conventional or “hybrid” kind. This reminds me of a Russian joke which goes like this: a man is walking down the street when a woman on the balcony suddenly screams “Help! This man is about to rape me!!!”. The baffled man looks up and says, “Lady, you are crazy. I have no intention of raping you. Besides, I am here in the street and you are above me on the balcony,” to which the woman replies, “Maybe, but I am about to come down!”. Just like this woman, the Poles and Balts, maybe moved a deep sense of guilt mixed in with an old inferiority complex are strenuously trying to convince themselves that Russia really badly wants to invade them. Russia, of course, has exactly zero need for more land, and even less need for the rabidly hostile and frankly psychotic population of these countries. In reality, the Russian plan for these countries is simple: simply buy the Baltics states and let the Poles and the Germans enjoy their traditional love-fest. From a Russian point of view, these countries and people are not coveted prizes but useless liabilities.

In contrast, Russia cannot ignore the Ukraine, especially not a Nazi-occupied one. As for the rest of Europe, it will always remain an important economic market for Russia and a place Russians will enjoy visiting, especially southern Europe and the Mediterranean. The very last thing Russia needs is any kind of war, especially a useless and potentially dangerous one with the West. Finally, it is likely that Russia will seek to establish close relationships with those southern European countries which really never wanted to pursue any anti-Russian policies, especially Greece and Serbia. So, while not being a priority anymore, the West will never become irrelevant either.

The hardest and also the most interesting thing to try to guess is what Russia will become internally. Probably not a monarchy, at least not in the foreseeable future. The most recent poll strongly suggests that a majority of Russians do not want to trade a democratic republican system for a monarchy. Besides, in a country where truly religious Orthodox Christians are a minority a monarchy really would make little sense. The problem with the current system is that it is entirely based upon the person of Vladimir Putin. In fact, I would argue that there is no “current system” at all, there is only one person, Vladimir Putin who, while immensely popular, has to deal with all of the many Russian problems is the “manual mode” – meaning personally. As soon as something escapes his personal attention things begin to go wrong. This is simply not a viable system. And just to make things worse, there is no credible successor to Putin in sight. Should something happen to Putin tomorrow morning the crisis hitting Russia would be huge. Add to this that Russians have a long history of good leaders succeeded by mediocre ones and you see how serious a threat the current “one man show” is for the Russian future. I would therefore argue that the development of a truly Russian political system (as opposed to an individual ruler) ought to be considered as one of the most important strategic priorities for those Russians who do not want their country to, yet again, become a western colony. Alas, the struggle between the “Atlantic Integrationists” (the Medvedev people) and the “Eurasian Sovereignists” (the Putin people) leaves very little time for that kind of endeavor.

So yes, “Russia is back”, but she is still very much wobbling on her feet, and unsure as to where to go next. Right now, her future depends on the fate of one man and that is exceedingly dangerous.

The Essential Saker II: Civilizational Choices and Geopolitics / The Russian challenge to the hegemony of the AngloZionist Empire

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156 Comments

dear Saker, thank God you’re okay – I thought maybe you were so mad about not enough donations that you’d given up on us….or that you were spending all your time at your new website about Orthodoxy – by the way – can you give a link to that site on this site please…

A sidebar, maybe call it “Seeking Tatars in Crimea”? While Strategic Affairs is not my first choice for factual material, this article seems to gather/analyze facts which I saw scattered in other articles over the years.

Thank you Saker for this wonderful analysis. When I was a child (about 9-10 years old) my mother told me that within our lifetimes we will see Russia emerge victorious and she was right. Yes Mother Russia has a long way to go still but I believe she is on the right path.

@ Seagull
Although I agree with some of the things said in this article. Fr. Romanides, may he rest in peace,
was pushing some obviously wrong things about Greeks.
First of all Greek forever refered to themselves as Hellenes, hence Hellada – Greece. The name Hellenes is from the people from parts of Thessaly in prehistoric times.
Second, he confuses some namings – some of the modern days Albanians were Illirians, who were not considered Greeks. Greeks from ME particularly Troy were not Latins, they spoke the same Greek dialect like the people from Thessaly, and yes they founded the City of Rome.
He suggests the Makedon (Macedonians) were not Greek, totally false. Let me compare some anecdotes:
Slavs have a saying: Lech (Liach in Russian, modern day Pole), Czech and Rus were bothers.
Greeks have a saying: Makedon and Magnitis (people from Thessally) were cousins. The only reason southern Greeks from Attica made fun of Macedonians was because the used really backward Greek dialect.
Yes, Romans had totally Greek roots.

Indeed, even in high school studying Latin (admittedly far off in the distant past) I was made aware by my Latin teacher that Rome built upon Greek foundations – the first part of this essay was of great interest. In those years we translated Virgil’s Aeneid, which takes the matter up in classical epic form, Aeneas journeying home much in the manner that Odysseus had earlier done returning home to Greece from Troy. (It was my delight to encounter the latter along with the Greek language later in college.)

I am not sure who would take issue with these historical facts – it’s clear the hierarchy of worship had equivalences in different names for the same gods. However, education is not what it once was, and I have had to explain more than once that indeed Greek was the lingua franca of early Christian times as well as before, when in the second century BC the Septuagint was composed by Alexandrian Jewish scholars.

And Russia itself has had an interplay of Greek and Latin educational practices. I’m glad I was exposed to both, though I do have a preference for Greek, I have to say. Both are in the very words we write here, along with other sources. Fascinating stuff.

I just came across at another site – this great link to the study of ancient languages – enjoy:

Putin is important personally, of course, but look at his popularity: he does not stand alone, even if those with him are not as well organized as should be. If he should go there are others who will work on taking his place, some better and some worse, but the forces — the tides of history — will not simply disappear. Putin facilitates but is not the cause of such currents, but a result. Even if interrupted the tides, and the people, cannot be denied expression.

When Saker says Putin relies on personal power, this relates to Max weber’s model of authority: there is only charismatic, traditional or rational legal. There is no system he states (that is, not rational-legal); there is no tradition (no monarchy being put in place either); it relies on Putin’s charisma.

Now what you are saying, is possible. Cuba has experienced a similar situation – Castro was absolutely brilliant at building the culture among the people (as you assert, exists in Russia, blue) and in that was his whole administration both was trained in the “tradition” of the Cuban revolution, and a rational-legal system developed to protect it. Hence, the Cuban revolution has persisted and thrived even after Castro.

I do not think it is possible for this political culture to be so embedded after only 18 years in Russia, especially since Putin’s reign did not come from a revolution that quashed all opposition – the opponents of Free New Russia are still alive and well and funding and supporting protests, etc. The raw material will be there, but I think a popular overthrow of the inevitable attempted colour revolution – not arrests, real Russians getting out in the streets and swamping the “dissidents” – is what will be needed to create the real epistemological turning point to truly break with the West in the eyes of the world and its own people take its own path. That’s when Russia gets to commit to the promise, cement a new order, and whoever follows Putin will have the traditional and systemic authority to follow that path.

PB said: “When Saker says Putin relies on personal power, this relates to Max weber’s model of authority: there is only charismatic, traditional or rational legal. There is no system he states (that is, not rational-legal); there is no tradition (no monarchy being put in place either); it relies on Putin’s charisma. ”

In an even more fundamental framework, Weber’s authority designations are also either legitimate or illegitimate. (Rummel, The Conflict Helix). All truly legitimate authority must strongly trace back to genuine support by the people. This is why a Czar may wield legitimate authority as well as an elected President. The officials/aristocracy/gov’ts operating between those leaders and the people may not have the population’s support, and therefore wield illegitimate authority.

The illegitimacy of most “democratic” gov’ts/leaders has long been clear, Mark Twain stating “if voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it”. Couple that to Butler’s “War is a Racket” and the illegitimate authority picture is more complete. Illegitimate “democratic” authority has industrially metastasized since these men wrote, but the underlying mechanism remains.

Critically, given the “post fact” MSM pandemic, the support of the people can also only be legitimate if the people have all the available, real information to decide which leader/gov’t they should support.

Milgram and Zimbardo showed how easily those holding illegitimate authority can incite inter-human inhuman acts, on the interpersonal and international scale. Bernays industrialized how the media are used to keep the populations geopolitically ignorant and ripe for manipulation via mis/dis-information.

Given the current US/NATO/Rothschild adversarial approach, Putin is obliged to keep much info secret that would fully discredit the vocal, but well placed, minority of Western/5th Column backers in Russia and beyond.

We do not see Putin being caught out saying one thing and doing the exact opposite, which is a daily (hourly?) occurrence from the US/NATO/Zionist media/gov’ts. This is the core of Putin’s support… what he (and his trusted cabinet) can reveal is real info, so they can be trusted by the people (and allied leagers/gov’ts) to appropriately manage the secrets Putin’s team must keep.

Maybe one day the people of the world may be able to make wise cooperative decisions based on having all the available info, but for the foreseeable future, the 0.001% and their 0.01% puppet banks/gov’ts/corporations/militarist/apparatchiks will fight to their last breaths to avoid losing the illegitimate authority power/wealth they have stolen over successive generations.

Think Trump is different from any other dynastic leader? Then why is he installing his children and their spouses in key positions? Like Chelsea Clinton being groomed for “First Woman POTUS” now that Killary is too old/infirm/mistrusted? Obama proved the 0.001% and their sycophantic Parties/MSM can manufacture a suitable candidate to meet the US public’s emotional needs (they sure don’t vote based on facts). Has anyone checked the odds being given on which POTUS’ female child will illegitimately occupy the Oval first, Ivanka or Chelsea?

@nice try.
Following on from the “legitimate” v “illegitimate” source of authority/governance.
HRC + DNC + deep state supporters hammer the “Hillary won the popular vote” or couched in the reverse: “Trump lost the popular vote”. This narrative is designed to “de-legitimise” Trump.
For all its failings, and seeming contradictions and absurdities, the duel (competing?) election process of state-based popular vote co-joined with the Electoral College is the “democratic” system the US subscribes to.
The “Russians hacked my election” running alongside the “Trump is not my president” (because he did not win the popularity part of the contest is water dripping on stone, wearing away Presidential authority.

***trump himself, as a flawed, juvenile personality, will do the rest.

@ White whale: The real point is, neither Trump nor Clinton have any claim to legitimacy (the list of POTUS’ with legitimacy is very short, if any). All the rest of the hacking/leak/Russia “controversies” are Weapons of Mass Distraction for consumption by the US/NATO/EU public.

They both were put in place by the same 0.001%ers, of course acting through loyal sociopath sycophants in the Parties/MSM and Deep State. Sanders was probably the closest to a legitimate candidate, but showed his covert allegiance to the illegitimate process by throwing his support to Clinton. Trump was foisted on the Republicgoons as the “candidate” most likely to be defeated by Clinton. The MSM mentioned Trump (positive or negative) more than any other Rep-candidate, as ordered by the Clinton corporate big money backers. A little too much for Clinton to win… unintended consequences suck.

The US Republic is no more legitimately “democratic” than the romanticized Greek version. In both cases only the usual few are given true access to power. “We The People” originally meant the wealthy. land-owning, politically connected, heterosexual, Christian white men… women, slaves, the poor and those of other ethnicity/religion/atheist/sexuality need not apply, even to vote, let alone hold office. The Suffragettes were still marching less than 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment passed in 1920.

Crimea is one of the few modern examples where the clear will of the people was relatively peacefully acted upon. Only the polite men in green acting on what were surely Putin’s direct orders ensured the true course of democracy there, in the face of the US/Kiev junta’s abuses. That is why the US/NATO/Rothschild Empire cannot swallow it… what if US (and all NATO/EU) citizens demanded true democracy? And the citizenry meted out justice for the treason of denying said democracy?

What a different world we could be living in, if only the 0.001% died for their psychotic actions, not the innocents worldwide.

Good point. You can see starkly the legitimate/illegitimate divide in Syria: even if Assad was a dictator who has sat on the throne for 1000 years, given the current support of 80% of Syrians for him against the bloody fundamentalism of the “opposition”, his legitimacy is evident.

And the same framework condemns Western invasion (if not already) of Iraq, Libya, and revolt in Egypt, Ukraine at least. Now that the clearly legitimate leaders of those countries have been overthrown, there is absolute confusion (certainly externally) over who *is* legitimate, allowing chaos to sift in these countries, legitimacy being rendered something only bestowed by Western acceptance.

That is why you need the political culture, the tradition and the system for a sovereign nation’s vision to survive transition of leadership while the world isuffers Western ambitions of global domination.

The West’s strength is to keep you occupied, boggled so that you can never reach your potential. Yes, Putin’s hands is full currently keeping Russia safe and fighting wars abroad. There will be more wars for Russia. However, Putin should work on identifying fearless leaders should something happen to him. In fact, it is naive to think that Russia’s fate should be on one man’s shoulder. Putin is mortal but Russia will go on so more leaders to protect Russia mist emerge. I don’t think there is anything wrong with Russia allying with the West, even western countries survived through alliance and marrying one another’s kings and queens to keep peace. Current Russia should do the same but not necessarily losing its identity. What is not clear is that the west seem to dislike Russia bass on her religion only? Or perhaps her writing that is not Latin-based. Or perhaps its once leaning towards communism?

“The West’s strength is to keep you occupied, boggled so that you can never reach your true potential.”

A very accurate statement, IMO. Lately, though, on a personal level, I’ve noticed a frantic attempt by imperial lackies to find something new to steal. (An area of study that I explored years ago has brought me fresh attention. I’m curious if others have had similar experiences? From pariahs to potential messiahs??) It does seem like an attempt to do (steal) anything to stay on top. If that is reflective of the current state of the Empire, then they may not be able of occupy and boggle others so effectively in the immediate future.

The new strategy appears maybe to be to allow some development to occur, with the intent to steal whatever new development may be created in the process.

The west’s strategy seems to me to be more akin to an aggressive poker player. The sort is always aggressively betting every pot. This forces other players to constantly react to them.

Not really a surprise to see this, because the US military does deliberately study and implement this sort of tactic. They call it being ‘inside an enemy’s decision making loop’. Which means a fast pace of operations such that they are taking their second action before their opponent has understood and reacted to their first action.

And, at least in America, its the military types who’ve been trained in this who are making decisions, as its very questionable whether any civilian control over the US military still exists or has even existed in the last 30 years. There were a few obvious examples of the US military telling Bill Clinton exactly where he could stuff it, and the current nearly open war between the Trump White House and the ‘Deep State’ seems to show America hasn’t taking any steps back to democracy in the meantime.

@ Anonymous: Any gambler will tell you betting on every pot no matter the state of your own hand is a sure sign of a loser. Even the house at a Las Vegas casino knows they can’t get too greedy fixing the games, or the illusion of chance quickly disperses leaving only the soon-to-be-broke addicts at the tables or pulling the levers.

The US MIC and its think-tanks/advisers do model all manner of actions, but don’t seem to be able to adapt those plans as the situation evolves. And that is where the Russian military and Putin seem to excel.

The US/NATO/EU colonialist/exceptionalist attitude is its fatal flaw, if the intention is to actually win… the Rothschilds play on this old colonialist attitude, and don’t want the US (or any nation/alliance) to “win”. The Rothschilds/0.001% profit from conflict and destruction… military, political, social, economic… by any means. The only “win” the Rothschild/Soros/Bilderberg/Davos/0.001% crowd wants is covert, unfettered control of the entire world economy to their exclusive benefit. Call it the Deep State, New World Order or Pax Americana, there is no true democracy in any vision the 0.001% hold for the rest of us.

The net effect of any nepotism, in this case Oligarchic, Zionist nepotism in the United States, is the same as the effects of ghetto, whether Jewish or EU aristocrat, inbreeding.
That is: advancement beyond one’s abilities and further degradation of the gene pool.
It can only end one way – the death of the Ruling Oligarchy and chaos.
The trick is to keep the collapse from causing too much collateral damage among the ‘well’ states.
Controlled demolition worked on 9/11. We should take a page out of the book of those conspirators and do the same for the American Empire, for all our sakes.

@ Franz: Yes, Queen Liz is a smart old bird, realized the Brit royals had to deepen the gene pool… hence Princess Diana and now Princess Kate. Not that either breeder was/is that far removed from the old-line aristocracy, but a half-step into commoner genetics should get them another couple generations before another floppy-ear Prince Charles appears. Prince Willie is not the brains in that couple either…

I prefer the French Revolution style, where’s a guillotine when you need one… “decapitate” the New World Order as it were. The trick is to avoid the problem of the extremist/mob-rule aftermaths the French and Russian revolutions caused.

Putin and Xi are subtly, steadily, on many fronts, maneuvering the US/NATO/Zionist/Rothschild empire to where there is no alternative to peaceful cooperation. The US MIC nuclear and conventional sabre-rattling is a sign of the weakness of the realistic US/NATO military capabilities, and Putin and Xi know that. The US/NATO/Zionist/Extremist-Corporate Empire is dying, and may be the last empire of the traditional type.

The covert sinews of empires function in secret, also using the lag in information dissemination to their advantage. The fact stock/currency/etc. markets are resorting to microsecond advantages shows how impractical any further attempts to hide relevant info are. It is public knowledge who the 0.001% are, all that remains is to link them more directly to the mass deaths of innocents…

“The West’s strength is to keep you occupied, boggled so that you can never reach your potential.”

True, but there is much more to the way the corporate-military-intelligence Matrix keeps everyone from reaching its human potential. If you are identified as a possible threat to the Matrix in whatever way (usually only intellectually) then you are “disabled”, either by being fired from your job and/or reduced to complete political and social impotence. You may have plenty of time and plenty of money, and yet you will be able to accomplish precisely nothing politically: you have been reduced to a pathetic nonentity and you will remain that way till you die. Should you entertain some other way of challenging the Matrix (other, that is, than intellectually), the Matrix can easily remove your physically, and you should know very well what it means.

(Lots of interesting commentary here!) You know, it does come across to me as a wild attempt to appear relevant. The brainwashed lackies invariably act as if they’re on top of the world, riding the gravy train into infinity. But I think they may be in for a surprise, by the looks of it.

I am sorry, it IS their way to be and stay relevant. Pathetic paradigm: Angela Hitler, these days again (as already at the occasion of MH370) proclaimed by the english as their fellow monarch, this time even „empress“ of Europe, the only one everyone on this „frankly psychotic” continent needs to listen to to know exactly where we are. Some laugh at that thing, the majority admires this thing, and her most fervent follower, Vucic, was just elected Angelic President of Serbia – if that (being able to push your cronies up theirs and “disable“ everybody else) is not being relevant…

Thanks for the comment, bp. (And I echo your tired cheers, lately I feel like I could sleep for 10 years.) Your statement is accurate, with evidence of recent Serbian election, noted. “Remain relevant” is what I should have put down. :-) It is such a farce, though, isn’t it? Glad you’re keeping calm, steady away, and carrying on, on your continent. I’m dodging a few newly re-discovered friends on this continent – I guess they’re permitted (directed) to talk to me again. How fortunate for me!! :-)

Good analysis. Putin is and was the historical reaction of the Russian people to the purposeful disintegration of the USSR. Despite being a good manager, he hasn’t succeeded in building a government for the people. The hatred that Russian patriots or people, who love Russia, have for the Medvedev gang shouldn’t be underestimated.

If you have followed the public mainstream discourse in shows like ‘вечер’ you will find that discontent with the economic government is getting to dangerous levels. They all holdback however, because of Putin’s support for his Nabiulinas, Siluanovs and Dvarkovichs. The consensus seems that Putin is strictly operating in confines of the current boundaries of the Russian colonial constitution and his apparent liberal economic convictions.

The disintegration of the Soviet heritage is still ongoing – from Ukraine to Kazakhstan from privatisation of Bashneft to the complete and utter destruction of the Soviet educational system (which Finland ripped off and is living happily ever after). The hope, that an economic system, which atomises society and makes a people to participants in a global bazaar, will transform Russia into a prosperous country is a illusion.

It’s true that things have gotten better in the time of Putin’s rule, but make no mistake he is the historic emergency measure of the Russian people. He acts like moderator rods in a nuclear reactor, that was about to get out off control – he can be more, but it seems, that he is waiting for the Russian people to step up.

If you compare the current Russian socio-economic situation to the potential (even just compared to Soviet times) given by real economic indicators like resources, energy, landmass etc. per capita, than you will truely appreciate the tragic disaster that is perpetrated by the liberal-oligarchic part of the current Russian government.

It is also breathtaking to see, with the truly miraculous exception of ‘The Saker’, how purportedly pro-Russian sites like the duran and others don’t cover this part of the Russia story.

For those, who understand Russian and who want to rely on credible summaries about the internal Russian situation I recommend following sources: moscow economic forum, isborsky club, den tv and tsargrad tv.

Yes, damn right. You sound like someone who actually knows what s/he’s talking about. Russia is also a banana republic – as it was during the last three or four centuries – run by the same mafia as the rest of the world, except it is not half as monstrously rotten, disgustingly corrupt as the openly satanic pharisaic pedophile Nazi cannibal run West (or something like that). There’s at least some law and order and normalcy left in Russia.

Putin (no evil Nazi GMOs in Russia), Trump (fights pedophiles and Nazi vaccines), Marine Le Pen, and so forth, are heavily demonized because they’re not part of this monstrous evil. The internet will bring this unspeakably evil crime syndicate down. (after it terrorized, tyrannized, corrupted the world for five centuries, and all but poisoned, ruined, and completely destroyed it as well)

@Laika von old Monkshusen: Trump in the same league as Putin? Not on any topic, not by any standard. The jury is out on Le Pen, assuming she gets the job at all.

GMO’s are a bad idea, a long way from the ancient agricultural/animal-husbandry methods they claim to be a mere extension of. Franken-organisms are an experiment that cannot be reversed.

Vaccines can be good if used judiciously and the benefit outweighs the potential harm. Do we really want to go back to the days of rampant polio, TB, smallpox, whooping cough and rubella?

That said, flu shots are a waste of time, potentially harmful and the greatest indicator that you will contract flu the next season, with or without another shot.

I have explained in detail elsewhere at Saker the need for all humans to get adequate nutrition (a full range of amino acid supplements, taurine and tryptophan particularly, plus a quality vitamins/minerals) to ensure our full-spectrum peak health. The fact is even the well(over?)-fed North American/EU public is often covertly, sub-clinically malnourished in these key metabolites, leading to the “epidemic” of diet-induced illnesses like diabetes, cardio-vascular, inflammation and nearly any “age-related” condition you can name. That is why the increases of those illnesses follow the introduction of “western” foods and chemical/mono-agriculture in to “developing” nations..

Consider that taurine is found in nearly every cell in the human body to maintain cell wall integrity and ensure the proper balance of fluids, calcium, magnesium and potassium (and more). I have yet to find a medical physician or standard-trained nutritionist of any stripe that has even a passing knowledge of taurine, let alone an in-depth understanding of how critical adequate taurine intake (2-6 grams per day) is to maintaining human organ/tissue function. It is informative that most taurine/amino acid research stops at the preliminary investigation stage. No extensive, large cohort research for anything that can’t be patented…

So Big Pharma/Medicine/Agriculture are intentionally colluding to keep us malnourished for critical nutrients and anti-microbials (eg colloidal silver) while propagandizing on the need for their services. A sick, mentally stressed population is more easily led by sensationalist propaganda, which is why cults use malnutrition as a brain-washing tool.

The internet/social-networks are used to disseminate the same MSM/propaganda bilge as the traditional media, so the same critical thinking skills apply… even here at Saker. Make no mistake, the political operatives and 5th Columnists are here in force. The mods can’t catch it all…

Yes, I agree, that would also be my pick. I *really* like the guy. But I wonder if he could generate the kind of support Putin did. Also, Putin is “made of out titanium” and I wonder if Rogozin has the kind of superhuman strength needed to rule Russia. I don’t know. I sure hope so and, as I said, he is my #1 candidate.
Kind regards,
The Saker

Great contribution, Saker!
Why could my history teachers not tell it in these clear words? I guess they were not allowed to. Which actually is very sad.
Hope you’ll get enough donations to continue your excellent work.
Regards from
Oscar The Red Cat (otrc)!

“…Putin has found a way to combine the external forms of democracy with the internal characteristics of Russian monarchy”.

If that is the way that works, and the way that Russian people like, then good luck and God bless them. It reminds me somewhat of the rule of Frederick the Great of Prussia, the “enlightened despot”.

Frederick had a considerable bureaucracy working for him – law courts, legislature, executive, the whole nine yards. But when he personally intervened, his decision was conclusive. On at least one occasion he had a bench of senior judges confined to a castle for a whole year, because he felt that their judgment in a very minor case had been fundamentally unfair.

By the way, Westerners may criticize any political system with a “dictator” at its apex. But there are arguments for and against this. A lot depends on the quality of the dictator. In Mr Putin, Russia has really struck lucky – he seems to me to belong in a very small category with Marcus Aurelius and Frederick the Great.

One way of looking at the difference between systems is that the Western “democracies”, with their frequent elections, serve to distribute and even dissipate responsibility. No sooner has one president or prime minister put certain policies in train than an election supervenes, and completely new people take over. Under such conditions, there is never any accountability, because the new administration simply blames the old one for everything that goes wrong.

Under Mr Putin’s “supremacy”, things are much clearer. Russians can look at the record since 2000, and see quite easily what the trends are. For the first few years, progress was less obvious – it takes a huge effort to establish any kind of control over a vast nation like Russia. More recently, though, we are seeing quite breathtaking results.

“Contrary to the official historical narrative, the current western civilization has never had any root into the Roman Empire, and even less so, the Greek antiquity. The true founders of the “western world” were, in so many ways, the Franks]”

Indeed. And it actually is the famous boutade of Churchill that disproves the trope. It was uttered on a BBC Broadcast, on the 1st October 1939. It is interesting to read it in its entirety:

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest of the safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of south eastern Europe, That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia.
Thus, my friends, at some risk of being proved wrong by events, I will proclaim tonight my conviction that the second great fact of the first month of the war is that Hitler, and all that Hitler stands for, have been and are being warned off the east and the southeast of Europe.
Here I am in the same post as I was 25 years ago. Rough times lie ahead; but how different is the scene from that of October, 1914! Then Russia had been laid low at Tannenberg; then the whole might of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was in the battle against us; then the brave, warlike Turks were about to join our enemies. Then we had to be ready night and day to fight a decisive sea battle with a formidable German fleet almost, in many respects, the equal of our own. We faced those adverse conditions then; we have nothing worse to face tonight. We may be sure that the world will roll forward into broader destinies.
We may remember the words of old John Bright, after the American Civil War was over, when he said to an audience of English working folk: “At last after the smoke of the battlefield had cleared away, the horrid shape which had cast its shadow over the whole continent had vanished and was gone forever”.

Churchill was not giving any ‘definition’ of Russia. He was a realist politician and not an ideologue. The riddle was about guessing what Russia’s position would be in the circumstances of the war which just started and Russia was practically an ally of sorts of Germany, with the possibility that the non-aggression pact might turn into an anti-British alliance. Churchill tries to calm the apprehensions of his audience telling it that it was not in the ‘historic life-interests of Russia’ to go along with such an alliance. The guess-work would continue for the next almost two years.
Now, Russia is a state with a long history, which never lost sight of her national interests (states have a life of their own). The ‘deep state’ always bounced back. If the Revolution, the War have not succeeded to destroy it, is it credible that barking at it would succeed?

Thank you for another wonderful article – yes Russia still has a way to go and hopefully over the next few years I pray and hope potential new leaders will emerge or some possibilites in the wings now will step up to the plate.

Re Western civilization:
I’m reading a book by a Dutch professor, Bas van Bavel, Manors and Markets – Economy and Society in the Low Countries, 500-1600, and he points out how little society of AD 500 in what is now roughly The Netherlands and Belgium derived from the preceding Roman society.
A Dutch scholar, specialist in Greek and Roman culture, wrote a book in 2009, in Dutch, of which the title translates as ‘Forgotten Heritage’ about how much of Western civilization derived from Ancient Mesopotamia and India and Greece by way of the Muslim World and how very much the Muslims contributed.
And as a final point an review of a book about Western science and technology in my Dutch newspaper yesterday said that until well into the sixteenth century Europe didn’t belong to the Civilized World.

I add a final matter: Professor Van Bavel wrote a next book I read earlier: The Invisible Hand? – How Market Economies Have Emerged And Declined Since AD 500. He investigated Free Market economies in Iraq 500-1100, North and Middle Italy 1000-1500 and the Low Counties 1100-1800 and ends with shorter investigation of England 1700-1900, US after 1800 and North West Europe after 1900. He concludes that in US the decline started around 1960, in EU 1990.

about how much of Western civilization derived from Ancient Mesopotamia and India and Greece by way of the Muslim World and how very much the Muslims contributed

You are 100% correct. But all the Islam-haters are going to go hysterical over this. Try telling some believer in “Christian West” notion that Western Europe owes most of its awareness of the antique world to, of all things, Islam and the poor guy will have a heart attack :-)

Of course, when I speak of “Islam” I speak of the educated “classical” Islam and not of the liver-eating freaks of ISIS/Daesh/al-Qaeda. Still, anybody even vaguely aware of the history of the West ought to be able to make the difference between the Takfiri crazies and the historical culture-bearing classical Islamic world.

The role of Islam in reacquainting the ‘West’ with Antiquity is severely overblown. As it became usual, the role of Byzantium (the preserver of all the Classical heritage in a Christian setting) is shoved under the carpet, as well as the role of Christian cathedral schools and monastic schools which retained the classical Roman curriculum which, albeit diminished, was to pass into the early and later medieval periods. The Carolingian Renaissance had nothing to do with Islam, but with the preservation of Classical heritage by the Irish monks. Neither did the Ottonian Renaissance which is a period of renewed contacts with Byzance. The 12th century Renaissance was also an internal movement for the recovery of the Classical heritage spurred by the creation of the Universities, which evolved from the former Cathedral and monastic schools of the Church. Little to do with Islam either.

“Contrary to the official historical narrative, the current western civilization has never had any root into the Roman Empire, and even less so, the Greek antiquity.”

This statement is itself highly hyperbolic and cannot be taken seriously.
For one thing, all western jurisprudence derives directly from the Corpus Juris Civilis or builds upon it. There is no question that Roman law is the basis of all western legal systems, meaning the basis of the rules by which western society governs itself. From this perspective, saying that western civilization has “never had any root in the Roman Empire” is, to my mind, the height of hyperbolic nonsense.

There is no question that Roman law is the basis of all western legal systems, meaning the basis of the rules by which western society governs itself.

This has only come to be the case in the English-speaking world by the secret and gradual elimination of English Common Law (under which the current system — disguised Feudalism — would be impossible).

By the same logic you can add that Latin languages derive from Latin or that French roads, including the Napoleonian one, were built over Roman ones. And why not add that the symbol of Fascism comes from the Roman fasces come from Rome. Then triumphantly mention the US Congress and its pseudo-Roman architecture :-)

No, seriously, Rome was not about laws, languages, roads, symbols or buildings. Nor does using Arab numerals make the West Arabic or using Greek letters make college fraternities Greek.

Of course there is much which is Roman which the West still uses, but *using* and *being* are totally different things. Furthermore, the western civilization has always been “wannabe Roman” – just look at Benito Mussolini. But the truth remains that 1000 years of total darkness separate Mussolini from the real Rome and that in the real Rome he probably would have been cleaning horse stables.

I wonder if you would agree that there is a strong Roman component in early Christianity? I discovered Marcus Aurelius a few years ago and thought how the positive Roman Virtues of loyalty, family, patriotism, morality, chastity, courage, truth-telling and stoicism/forbearance can be found in different measure in the New Testament. While, on the other hand, almost NONE of those qualities are championed or present in the Old.

» current western civilization has never had any root into the Roman Empire «

So what is “western”? Historically, it’s France and England, and by extension the English colonies in America and Australia. Basically, F/UK/US. But I suppose you mean NATO space, the Westblock? Which is what NATO leaders, ahistorically, refer to as “the West”. And which doesn’t make much sense in a historical and cultural perspective.

Anyway, the importance of the Roman influence on Western and Central Europe (and, by proxy and timeshift, even on Russia) cannot be overstated.

Language: Italy, Romania, France, Spain, Portugal – direct Latin descendants. English – flooded by Latin/Roman imports to the point where its status as a Germanic language can be questioned. German – less Latin imports, but developed during centuries from farmer/hunter/fisher/warrior level in a struggle to reach the conceptual possibilities of the Latin language. (Same point holds true, I think, for Dutch and the Northern Germanic languages.)

Architecture and infrastructure, roads and bridges: self-evidence.

Religion: The Romans adopted Christianity as a state religion and that’s how it spread to the other peoples of Europe.

Politics: The idea of Imperium / Reich among the peoples of Europe is Roman. And was picked up by the Franks, yes. And by Napoleon and Hitler, but these two are just brief historic flashlights.

I’m sure there’s more. But we can already state with confidence that the Roman Empire is *fundamental* for contemporary Europe. And, from my conservative point of view, Latin still is Europe’s most important language due to its fundamental place.

This article does not touch on the economic system under the new constitution designed by Western advisors to keep Russia poor. Although not relying on debt is perhaps not all that bad, having to pay 10% interest rates where in the West they are 2-3% hobbles the Russian economy and investment to a degree that it has been called “Russia’s Achilles heel.” But I expect they will have to fight a war to get out from under their constitution and they don’t want war. If the middle class can’t borrow and invest, the capital structure is controlled by the moneyed elite, an aristocracy if you will, which you (Saker) say is pro-Western, and corrupt in many instances. When I first started following you (Saker), you talked about the structure of the banking system and Financial reform. It is entirely Western from what I can tell, so Russia is working for the West at usurious rates. Please comment.

Europe stopped trying to invade Russia not for maturation of its values or a lessening of its evil – it stopped efforts of military conquest and genocide starting around 1949. Shouldn’t the reason be obvious?

The germanic tribes –Goths, Franks and so on— generally adopted the language and culture of the Roman territories to which they moved and conquered. Another way of putting this is that the Germans conquered Rome – militarily. But Rome conquered them culturally, including in its laws. That’s why most ex-roman provinces don’t speak a Germanic language, though there are many words of Germanic origin in their languages. And that’s why the language of all western legal systems is literally drenched in roman words, phrases and concepts. So much for western civilization having no root in Rome.

On a separate note, the “darkness” of the so called “Dark Ages” is itself a gross simplification, and in great measure a myth. The absence of Empire does not mean the absence of enlightment. And I doubt the misery of a “dark ages” peasant, however miserable, could compete in misery and horror with the appalling condition of Roman slaves, which were the engine of the Empire. Further, I doubt the misery of a dark ages feudal peasant could be in any sense worse than the misery of their descendents after the “Renaissance” and then the gradual Enclosure reforms kicked them out of the land and sent them to the glamor of wage slavery in city slums.http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain
Mr Engels has some vivid descriptions of living conditions in the most picturesque areas of Manchester in the 19th century, easy to find for those of a curious mind. Was it really darker than that in the dark ages?

What about the russian vedic tradition?
in my view russia was a bridge or interface between the west and the east .

maybe it is time to find a third position which is neither but exceeds both. It seems inevitable that humanity rises beyond the old cultural political … isms and dividing religions.etc. or perish?
let us emerge from this valley of tears and misery into the peace and light of the Spirit
a marvelous new creation. awaits us….

In general an excellent analysis of Russia, what she is, what she was and what she can possibly be. The only thing I disagree with to an extent is the fact that Russia is dependent on one man, V V Putin.

Whilst it is quite true in general that if his finger is not on a particular pulse everything goes to hell in a hand basket with alacrity I have seen in the last couple years the beginnings of at least some of the wealthy thieves hesitating before they feast at the trough. Reason is too many of them have suddenly run afoul of the very deeds they were so hasty to perform. The same is true of anyone working under Lavrov or General Shoigu, screw up and eventually you will be working under a cloud somewhere else.

In addition I have zero doubts that VVP, Lavrov, Shoigu and all the important ones in the team are carefully grooming replacements for when the time comes for them to retire. They have shown too much acumen to not be doing so and I don’t think they will retire and simply rest on their laurels. Far from it. Putin, Lavrov and Shoigu will be the elder statesmen and soldiers for the rest of their lives when they retire. They have all worked far too hard and far too strenuously to just quit, go away and leave Russia to her fate. I don’t think that is going to happen.

As for Russia herself, my opinion has always been and is to this day that Russia is the third Rome, she is the inheritor of Byzantium culture, religion and law lock, stock and barrel and we all know who Byzantium was the heir to although Constantinopol did go her own way many years before the first Rome succumbed to the darkness.

VVP has assembled quite a team and we read of only a very few of them. However, the team is large and growing and it is from the younger members that the replacements for the older members will happen over time. It is interesting to see the shaking knees of the local PTB, some of them, when some of the team visit as happened yesterday.

At one time I was an enemy of Russia so I studied her intensely. If you study Byzantium you will understand Russia to an extent. When Constantinopol fell tens of thousands of the residents fled, many east to Krim, the east coast of the Black Sea on the mainland and Odessa, from there they moved slowly north. Many were not poor and brought with them considerable riches which assured them of at least access to power.

– The only thing I disagree with to an extent is the fact that Russia is dependent on one man, V V Putin.

You are not alone.

Fortunately for me (saving my time), and strangely enough, – taking into account the “fake news” hysteria in the West – on March 27 “Guardian” allowed a columnist, Dmitry Trenin, write a great article about Putin and Russia. Here is the paragraph, related to the subject we discuss here:

— his [Putin’s] job is in fact a mission that will not be done as long as he is active. His challenge in the long term is to pass on leadership to a new generation of Russia’s leaders, and make sure that this works. Right now he is busy identifying people, most of them in their 40s and even 30s, who might form that group. Some have already been appointed to senior positions as ministers, governors, or other high officials. All will be [and are being] tried and tested and given tasks to fulfil. Putin himself, a father figure to his proteges, would then become a pater patriae, or, to use a Singaporean formula, a president mentor…

The link to the whole article (it is rather short and worth reading, imho):

The oldest ‘human’ remains have been found in Africa. The accepted wisdom is that humans then spread out from there, litterally to the ‘four corners’ of the world, that is if you are an NBA basketball player and believe the world is ‘flat’. :)

But still, all this “Who’s Your Daddy?” bit of classifying everyone in one ‘racial’ bucket or another does seem to ignore the fact that we all come from the same place and we all share some original common ancestors. We just took different paths to get here.

Yet again you’ve penned a compact, penetrating analysis that is a great pleasure to read. There is something reminiscent of Old Testament poetic wisdom in the way you unfurl the fabric of Russian identity.
Again, I am ashamed of not having made a contribution to the upholding of costs for this truly unique blog of yours.
Alas I will go against Solomon on this and take action at Pay Pal.

I have had a hard time with this analysis.
First I don’t buy the point that Russia has a direct link to the Antiquity. Just by looking at Russian Icones, I recognize the link between Russia and Byzance but Byzance is not the antiquity. The west rediscovered the Antiquity with the Renaissance. With the Renaissance, first in Italy we rediscover the man, his body, his movement, the light and the nature. Most of the western elite until 1900 were speaking and writing Latin and Greek. Napoleon in Egypt brought with him lots of “savants” which contributed to the discovery of ancient Egypt. The West has been stamped by the Antiquity.
Second I am surprised by your feeling that the West has always been aggressive against Russia, it was not felt like this by the Europeans, I know. Napoleon, like Alexander are some kind of meteorites. Napoleon is the son of the French revolution and the European monarchies went united against him. After having defeated most of them, Russia and England were trying to find out how to get rid of him. After the repeated naval defeats of Villeneuve against Nelson, Napoleon realized that he could not go to London, he decided to go to Moscou and that was a bad idea and I am surprised that Hitler did not learn from him. But when Napoleon went to Moscou, he and the frenchs never hated the Russians. Historically, the Frenchs were much more against the British than the Russians.
Third: I noticed that the Borodino monument has all the symbols of the Freemasons. Strange ?
Fourth: You are telling us that Russians were prevented to be themselve for 330 years. It means that what the West learned from Russia through your writers and composers were not revealing of Russia, so I would like to know what we should expect when the Russians will fell free and happy in their shoes.

what the West learned from Russia through your writers and composers were not revealing of Russia, so I would like to know what we should expect when the Russians will fell free and happy in their shoes.

Nobody seems to notice that the Bolshevik cultural establishment declared war on the high culture in Russian music — mandating primitive, ugly stupidity (compare the late romantics with Prokofiev) — at the same time the cultural elite in the west were trashing composers like Elgar and the heritage they embodied.

The only east/west difference in the arts I see was in painting and architecture (the SU retaining sanity in these).

The high culture of music did not devolve into fragmentary nihilism by any natural process. This was imposed. Resulting in Shostakovich being obliged to appear to be in sympathy with Soviet Realism while subverting it from within — the closest he could come to rejecting it and writing the kind of music he could have. (And no, I do not think that the kind of tuneful circus music Khatchaturian wrote disproves this).

This was a PsyOp — a cultural war to replace high culture in order to replace it with garbage on both sides. And conducted by the same people.

Returning to your question, I confidently expect the instauration of Russian high culture in music once Russians control their own realm and have the freedom to express themselves in it openly, unafraid of being mocked into intimidated silence.

Do you really think that Russians were unable to continue the lines of development that people like Tchaikovsky, Rimsky and Mussorgsky began ? Or were they obliged to create what would please those whose values were not theirs ?

Miles Mathis has been arguing likewise. Not only the drug trade and other domains of the Mafia have been integrated into the money printers Intelligence agencies, but the ‘Art industry’ in all its aspects from literature to video games as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art
“Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era.”

Artists always have ups and downs in their struggles against politicians and academies, and trying to make a living, especially with innovation, but the important to know is that modern or abstract art (as Star Trek’s Mr. Chekov would have point out) was a Russian invwention!

(BTW, impressionism, such as from Monet, is not really modern art, but the result of old painters with fuzzy eyesight painting what they saw.)

lol! About the fuzzy eyesight. Good critique of impressionism which usually has doilies and lacy curtains and curly locks all over.

Do you not think/fear, that a lot of ‘innovation’ at the turn of the century in Russia was also part of the coming deformations which were going to be visited on Russia by The Wicked Witch of the West? Innovation for innovation’s sake became the revolutionary motto. No one knew what Proletarian Art was going to look like but it certainly could look nothing like the past.
This stupidity for the stupid in charge, took on sinister meaning and led to monstrous excess, such as the persecution of the only proletarian writer ever ‘produced’, Andrei Platonov and the championing of possible grand guignole rubbish in the theater such as that practiced by Meyerhold and brawling excesses in poetry such as that of most of Mayakovsky?

Speaking about Borodino and what a symbol of Russia was (and is) please watch the classic ‘War and Peace’ of Bondarchuk made in 1966 (part 6 on YouTube, from 32:30 to 36:00) and remember (if you ever knew) that Stalin did the same thing before the assault against Moscow.
The All-Seeing Eye is a Christian symbol, albeit no very frequently used. It was taken by the Masons from the Church (the Masons were builders of churches in the first place). You read to much ‘Illuminati’ and ‘Skull and Bones’ stuff.

A little history with regard to the Napoleonic wars and that monument.

Essentially, it was France, and to some extent Bonapart’s relatives in Spain and Italy and I suppose Holland who willingly invaded Russia in 1812. Everyone else on that list were conquered countries who were forced to give troops to Napoleon’s armies. And of course these troops suffered terrible losses. The two obvious ones on the list are Austria and Prussia. Both were close allies to Russia when they had their own independent monarchies. Russia sent troops to both countries to fight alonside them against France.

And, just after the invasion of Russia collapsed and Napoleon came home basically without an army, both Austria and Prussia threw off French rule and again declared war on Napoleon. Both Prussian and Austrian armies fought alongside the Russian army at the ‘Battle of Nations’ and during the final invasion of France that overthrew Napoleon. Prussia was also a key factor in the Waterloo campaign that finally sent Napoleon packing for good.

Not sure it really matters, one way or the other, but if you want to be accurate neither Napoleon’s invasion nor Hitler’s really represented a united Europe that was attacking Russia. More accurately both were times when Europe had been conquered and the conquerer then forced the conquered to join them on invasions of Russia.

Am I the only one here who find it extremely odd that the Russian (and European) Chronology used is still (by default) that of Scalager et al. while that of Fomenko and his associates (very widely known in RF) is passed over without even a mention of it ?

Or would doing this be inexpedient — opening a second front in the ideological war against the enemies of Russia (when fighting on one front already demands maximum effort) ?

What a great day it will be, when we collectively realize that the money printers industrialized fake news, fake history, fake science and fake education not just yesterday, or the day before yesterday, but centuries, indeed millennia ago.

Once monetary supremacy was achieved, all of the almost infinite money-out-of-nothing-resources were pooled instantly and mercilessly into hiding this secret of secrets from the goyim by veiling it with crusades, ice-cream, Tarzan, witch hunts, video games, Communism, Freemasonry, Jesus, Women’s rights, Jogging, Reformation, Apollo 11, nylon stockings and trans-humanism.

What an unavoidable and staggering success it has been. We are not only surrounded by our enemy, but have been made its agents ourselves. The enemy flows through our bloodstreams as junk food and through our neural circuits as fake knowledge.

Even the money printers and their fellow dwellers in the capstone of the pyramid themselves have been hopelessly overwhelmed by their success and have lost track of what is matrix and what is real.

When discussing Poland, its good to remember that Poland’s current borders include large areas that were traditionally ‘German’. In the north, along the coast, from Gdansk onwards, those are areas that were traditionally known as ‘East Prussia’. And Poland was shifted generally to the West at the end of WW2. Areas that were traditionally German were given to Poland, and at the same time the east border of Poland was moved west as well to give land to what was then the Soviet Union. These lands became part of Belarus and Ukraine as the Soviet Union split apart. From WW2 maps, the Lviv area that appears to be the home of Ukraine fascism is the area that was once the Polish city of Lvov.

So, its about as surprising that there is a current ‘love-fest’ between Poland and Germany as it is that eastern Ukraine and Russia get along. For the same reasons. There are a lot of people in both Poland and Ukraine who traditionally tend to think of themselves as German or Russian.

“Anonymous” says anonymously: “There are a lot of people in both Poland and Ukraine who traditionally tend to think of themselves as German or Russian.”

This, of course, is not true–unless you specify what you mean by “a lot of”. But whatever the weasel expression “a lot of” means to you, not many Poles think of themselves as Germans, who (you must not forget) have traditionally been the worst enemies of Poles. There is a saying in Polish: “Dopóki świat światem, nie będzie Niemiec Polakowi bratem.” (“As long as the world exists, a German will never be a brother to a Pole.”)

Likewise a typical Pole, who is usually (and regrettably) an ardent Catholic, is not likely to think of himself or herself as a Russian. This is, of course, quite unsettling because both Russians and Poles are very close culturally and linguistically. The current pathological russophobia in Poland is a tragedy that may have terrible consequences for Polish culture and sovereignty.

In other words, I suspect you don’t know what you are talking about. (Yes, I have spent “a lot of ” years in Poland and I have studied Polish culture for “a lot of” years.)

I think that the first part of this Monty Python sketch should be mandatory viewing, globally.
Up until the end of the “argument” is good (the first half the video). : https://vimeo.com/25921512

Although we speak frequently and I have been reading your blog every single day since I stumbled upon it in 2013, I tend not to leave comments.

However today you have outdone yourself. Your writing as many of us appreciate is often extremely on point.

The contextual summary you have just penned on the recent Russian experience (333 yrs) is the best I have ever read. Thank you from every essence of my Russian soul!

May I politely ask every single Saker reeader to please print this article, forward it to every Russophobic friend you may have and disseminate this
master piece. Lets get behind this triumph of understating and clarity that Andrei gave us and help his word reach those who form their opinions based on the non stop repetition of slanderous labels and fearful judgements.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Art makes the spirit explode.

Thank you Saker for all you do!!! I hope we can all get behind you financially and morally so that you may continue providing us these gems.

During the early years of Soviet Union, many atrocities were committed against the Russian people and orthodox church ( but it’s not useful also to idolise tsarist Russia with its backwardness, illiteracy, inequality, poverty and harsh conditions for common People).

There were also numerous Jews in the early Bolshevik party / government ranks too and some of them had a sinister role ( such as Genrik Yagoda of nkvd ).

But the soviet system and Soviet elites were not static. Stalin abandoned the idea of global revolution and adopted “socialism in one country”. Restrictions in religious practice were somewhat relaxed. During ww2, patriotism was promoted ( the war was called great patriotic war ). A form of national communism was established in Soviet Union and eastern Europe post ww2 ( nothing to do with the borderless genderless ideology of fringe loony pseudo leftist groups and parties of the current globalisation era)

The system was Soviet and socialist but the elements of the pre revolutionary Russian culture and state shaped it.

The people who lived in USSR had their original cultures, they didn’t automatically change into “Soviet people”. Millions were villagers in rural Russia and many others were nomads in the central Asian steppes.

It seems that during Soviet period, popular culture was promoted and western cultural imports were kept at a minimum (even though many eastern European youths had an affinity for western clothes and music – the iron law of prohibition? ). There was also less cultural influence by the West as the eastern bloc was isolated economically from western capitalism.

Even though “hard core” communist governments ruled eastern Europe, there were somewhat socially conservative. Gender and family relations remained more traditional than the West. There were no Gay parades in Soviet Russia.

Compared to what we witness today in Europe,
the eastern Bloc regimes could be described as patriotic and traditional. Their economies were totally under national and social control ( whereas today markets are controlled by multinational corporations, banks and private capital ).

What we have today is degeneracy at all levels. There are still nominal states across Europe ( France, Italy, Greece etc) but they are no longer nation states. They have lost any meaningful sovereignty and they still exist as vassal entities of the neoliberal globalised economies. Local cultures are being eroded by massive migration and technological advances.

These states exist only as spaces for the multinational corporations to plunder and profit.
Nothing that unites the people is or could be promoted. You can only be a consumer ( if you have the money and job).

The end of USSR enslaved not only the people of russia but all other people’s of the world.
25 years after the end of socialism, we witness now a similar but slower process of disintegration in the western world. The decaying western states are in perpetual crisis and target the only country that is somewhat sovereign. Russia.

Russia is rising under Putin and stands against NWO, but without Putin it will be easy for other elites to take over and integrate Russia into globalist institutions.

In order to protect Russia, the irony is that we need to return to policies of Soviet Union .
Without national control of the economy and the creation of self sufficient economy, Russia could not survive.

I am afraid that your version of Early Soviet history reminds me of Fractured Fairy Tales from Hollywood or the Rocky and Bullwinkel Show.
To mention only Henrik Yagoda of the over 80% Bolshevik Ruling Class who were carrying out the twenty million death genocide of Russian Christian Slavs in the Russian Empire which they seized in their Western-backed color ‘revolution’ is to flush your credibility down a very dirty toilet.
The Khazar fakejew bolsheviks were worse than ISIS and Daesh.
Your absurd take on history relies more on the Three Stooges version of such characters than on historical fact about who and what they were.

I’m not so sure about harsh conditions for the common people during czarists Russia. I grew up in St Petersburg in a communal apartment that was shared by 18 families. Before revolution, this very same apartment was occupied by a working class family. The lady who used to own it was still alive, and still living in the same apartment. I talked to her on many occasions and she was the first one to teach me that history is 99% propaganda. Yes, people complained a lot but their standards of living were infinitely better than those in Western Europe. Everything got twisted after 1917. I prefer memories of real people as oppose to books that were allowed to be published. Worst case scenario, I can settle for forbidden books.

History belonged to the victor. The victors were ‘agents of Western Khazar fake-jew capitalism.
That is why Khazars made up over 80% of the Bolshevik Leadership and later the Soviet Ruling Class.
They blackened the memory of the Monarchy to whiten their own bloody crimes.

Soviet Union provided free health care, public education, subsidised housing and transport and guaranteed jobs to the population. These benefits were a great achievement even though there were complaints about the quality of housing etc. But in the “advanced” West, do you think that things are far better ? Young people cannot afford to buy houses. Other pay exorbitant amount for cramped low quality apartments to rent or to buy. At least in USSR you got your apartment for free and paid minimal amounts for body corporate costs etc

Lets not forget that USSR started from a lower level of development compared to the West, and was devastated by Nazi Germany during WW2. USSR had to reconstruct without foreign aid, and subsidised with billions of aid numerous other countries of the Socialist Bloc (Eastern Europe, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Arab and African socialist-oriented regimes etc).

Even if Tsarist Russia had continued to exist (in any or some form), it is doubtful that the tsarist state would have provided even a fraction of what the Soviet state did. Significant inequalities would have existed, with the boyars and the emerging capitalist class dominating the economy. I suppose there will be some progress achieved (as evidenced in all countries of the period), but don’t expect that there will be a similar level of welfare state or a similar level of economic and scientific development to that achieved under the Soviets. A Tsarist Russia (as a constitutional monarchy with a capitalist oriented economy) in the 20th century would be at the ” periphery ” of the capitalist world, not a
” core ” country of the global economy (as USSR managed to become). There is no chance that a Tsarist Russia would be a global superpower either, probably it would be just a regional important player and a vast market for western corporations.

But of course not everything was great at USSR. The main deficiency was the lack of true democracy (but real democracy does not exist and never existed in the pseudo-democratic West also). I guess there were many grievances such as that there were not that many consumer or luxury goods. But even in the western world, you can buy luxury products only if you have (a lot of) money, and numerous people cannot afford even the basics and live a miserable existence.

To take the decision to implement perestroika, there should be many grievances against the soviet system during the late 1980s. Some of the elites and some of the people may have thought that the system could be improved. But what followed was far worse (and the sad thing is that it could have been avoided as other paths could have been taken by the then soviet elites).

The statistics reveal a very dark outcome. Life expectancy fell dramatically (50s for men), birth rate collapsed and abortions increased. Millions emigrated. Hundreds of thousands became drug addicts and got infected with HIV and other diseases.

Russia ceased to be a superpower, and lost its sphere of influence in eastern Europe. Nato and EU came at its doors.
Soviet Industry disintegrated and Russia became a subordinate partner of the West.
The privatisation of Russian state property was the theft of the century.
And suprise suprise, the oligarchs who plundered the soviet state factories and property are of jewish extraction. From a global superpower, Russia ended up a semi-colonial periphery country that exported gas and people the West.

The sad thing is that all this misery could have been avoided. It was a self destruction of a global superpower caused by the greed and recklessness of some of its elites who decided to dismantle socialism and adopt capitalism, to become “businessmen”. All this caused chaos and the rest is history….

As somebody who grew up in USSR, I lived in just about every corner of this vast country; Kaliningrad, Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Moscow and many other places nobody ever heard of. One of the things I missed the most, about this period of my life, is the relationship among people. Those deep, all night talks in microscopic kitchens over endless cups of tea; listening to music, sharing books and having a friend suddenly show up at your doorstep who just wants to talk. No forewarning telephone calls were necessary. Friendships were real! Only those who remember those times know what I’m talking about.

Russia still has some of it. If a woman is mistreated in a metro (or elsewhere) somebody would always come to the rescue. Here people will just pretend like they don’t see the abuse. Westerners are trained to be selfish, insular and incapable of deep friendship. It all comes down to coworkers and immediate family. Obviously, I’m not trying to say that everybody is like that. I was fortunate enough to develop good friendships here, in the west, but this is not the same as what was taking place in the Soviet Russia. I can’t even explain it to people over here.

Saying that, I disagree that pre-1917 Russia would’ve never succeeded as a super power. First, I don’t think Russia ever wanted to be a super power. Secondly, Russian industrial potential was growing and expanding with an amazing speed and Russian national wealth was unrivaled by any other country in the west. Russian science, art, music and literature was one of the wonders of the world in every imaginable style. For example, what Alexander Scriabin was composing at that time was far more advanced and unheard of than anything in the west. Dostoyevsky is still one of the marvels of world’s literature that, after all this time, has just as much value as when it was written. I can go on, and on, and on…Al these were signs of a very prosperous country.

I disagree with you that what is taken by the ‘West’ to be Russia’s ‘history’ is 99% propaganda. It is 100% fake history! Most people are unable to see that, intoxicated by Marxist, ‘democratic’ and ‘antifascist’ verbiage as they are and unwilling to shed their ideological blinkers. They lack the experience of those ‘all night talks in microscopic kitchens [of confiscated homes] over endless cups of tea; listening to music, sharing books and having a friend suddenly show up at your doorstep who just wants to talk’ (more often than not about the great problems of existence).
One other thing is that Russia is not confronted with an existential choice: to be ‘European’ or ‘Asian’. Russia IS an Eurasian country. Euro-Asian, by definition. As even a ‘Westernizer’ like Chaadaev realized: a “sleeping giant suspended ‘between the two great divisions of the world, between East and West, with one elbow resting on China and the other on Germany’, a nation that should have united in its history ‘the two principles of intellectual life, imagination and reason, and brought together in [its] civilisation the history of the entire globe”.
Although Russia never wanted to be a ‘superpower’, her internal dynamism would have made her inevitably one. All aggressions against her have been attempts to stop that ‘threat’. The ‘West’ made it clear (Mackinder). The renewed belligerent frenzy of the ‘West’ is an admission that the ‘threat’ is as present as ever and the nightmarish possibility of a Russian-Chinese ‘alliance’ is becoming by the day a reality. That must be stopped. America must be the ‘great’. It’s her ‘manifest destiny’.

If the tsars had kept certain foreigners out of the country – prevented the take-over of the country by them – it could and would’ve been the richest and biggest superpower in the world, in every possible way, period.

That didn’t happen. The Roth-child mob corrupted Russia and took it over in 1917, and turned it into a Jewish run concentration camp. Worst – lowest level – thing ever happened to a country. Stalin (seemingly) gradually managed to at least make something more Russian and independent of it. Which was reversed post-Stalin until the Roth-child mob again could take over in the 90s.

The irony is that the Germans, formally ‘allies’ during the Lenin-Trotsky Red Terror in Russia,
copied Matthew Berman’s GULAG (Holocaust machine for Christian Slavs) and applied it to their own undesirables starting in 1938.

“Concentration’ camps were established by the British in South Africa for Boer families who had been expelled from areas being swept clear of Boer commandos (or guerillas) by British troops, as well as for Africans who had been displaced by the war. In both black and white camps many died from disease, due in part to insanitary conditions and overcrowding. The Liberal politician Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman openly condemned what he called ‘methods of barbarism’.
Thousands died from unspeakably bad conditions and disease. As stated in the UK Archives:
It has been estimated that between 20,000 and 28,000 white civilians died of disease in these camps. There were also 14,154 recorded deaths of black people from disease in the camps (over one in ten of the black camp population) and such deaths were under recorded.
While the policy may have succeeded in military terms [forcing the Boers, it is believed, to surrender – thereby ending the war], it was a political disaster, earning the British a level of unpopularity on an international scale comparable to that of the USA during the Vietnam war. One contemporary critic even used the term ‘holocaust’. Public criticism was, however, centred on the white camps; those for Africans, where provision was usually even poorer, were hardly mentioned in the debate”.

“In some camps, two, and even three sets of people, occupy one tent and 10, and even 12, persons are frequently herded together in tents of which the cubic capacity is about 500 c.f. [cubic feet].
I call this camp system a wholesale cruelty … To keep these Camps going is murder to the children…
It can never be wiped out of the memories of the people. It presses hardest on the children. They droop in the terrible heat, and with the insufficient unsuitable food; whatever you do, whatever the authorities do, and they are, I believe, doing their best with very limited means, it is all only a miserable patch on a great ill.
Thousands, physically unfit, are placed in conditions of life which they have not strength to endure. In front of them is blank ruin … If only the British people would try to exercise a little imagination – picture the whole miserable scene. Entire villages rooted up and dumped in a strange bare place.”(Emily Hobson’s “Report of a Visit to the Camps of Women and Children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies,” 1901)
@https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Boer-War-Concentration-Camps

Technically, the GULAG camps were prisons for convicted criminals sentenced to ‘corrective labor’.

Well…it is all well and good to ruminate about ancient history and the Franks and Romans …and thus eliciting yelps of outrage from various uninformed quarters…

Speaking of which…’Byzantium’ is a coinage that was invented in the 16’th century…As was ‘Eastern Roman Empire…’

‘…During most of its existence [1,000 years], the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Both “Byzantine Empire” and “Eastern Roman Empire” are historiographical terms created after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire as the Roman Empire (Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, tr. Basileia tôn Rhōmaiōn; Latin: Imperium Romanum),[2] or Romania (Ῥωμανία), and to themselves as “Romans”.[3]…’

The fact that Charlemagne…King of the Franks was crowned ‘Emperor of the Romans’ by Pope Leo III in the year 800 can be considered the ‘fake news’ of its day…

We can also look back and see that at the very moment in time that a fake ‘Roman’ emperor was being crowned…mostly due to the Catholic Pope’s outrage that a woman…Empress Irene…had lately become the legitimate ruler of the ‘Eastern’ Roman Empire [for those who insist on getting their education from Gibbon…]the Iberian peninsula had been under the rule of the Omayyad Caliphate [Damascus] already for nearly 100 years

…and would remain so for another nearly 700 years…until Grenada was finally ‘reconquered’ in 1492…the year of Italian navigator Cristofero Colombo’s historic voyage…

In fact…even the Frankish lands of the eighth century were fortunate to escape the Caliphate’s yoke…the ‘Moors’ having little interest in advancing much beyond the Pyrenees…and having underestimated the Franks fighting ability under the brilliant general Charles Martel…

It is worth noting that the Caliphate at the time was as mighty as the Roman Empire had ever been…if not more so…ruling an area nearly four and a half million square miles [about half of present day US]…and lordship over 62 million people…29 percent of the total world population at the time…

The geopolitical reality of the day was that the Western world in the ninth century was about evenly split between the mighty Caliphate and the real Roman Empire in Constantinople…[whose mantle…incidentally…the Russian Empire assumed after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the 15’th century]…

Unlike the Moors and Romans…The Franks did not even have a heavy cavalry at this time…not yet having figured out the technology of stirrups…that pretty much tells you everything you need to know…

Of course all of this discussion is very much tangential to any matter of substance in today’s world…I would call it simply a discussion of ‘cultural’ historiography…and I would hope that the author would agree…

Not that cultural sovereignty is unimportant…it is very much a fact that one of Russia’s current weaknesses is that it has not yet restored its cultural sovereignty…as noted by Nikolai Starikov…who posits…correctly…that there are five aspects of sovereignty…

1. the recognition of the territory of the country…

2. Diplomatic sovereignty…implying the ability to pursue an independent policy…

3. Military Sovereignty…the ability to rebuff any aggressor…

4. Economic Sovereignty…

5. Cultural Sovereignty…

There is no doubt that Russia today has regained control of the first three…and is arguably working on number five…which seems to be the point of this article…

Unfortunately Russia’s economic sovereignty is not in its own hands…Starikov’s treatise on this latter makes for a good, lively read…up to the time of its writing…2012…

‘…The answer is plain. The same parasitic bankers that enslave Western “democracies,” the same bankers that are behind perpetual warfare on humanity, the same bankers that conduct false terror operations to achieve their goals, the same bankers that are destroying our planet’s life support systems, the same bankers that are stealing everything everywhere on earth, the same bankers that pose the gravest risk to our few remaining liberties—are controlling the issuance of money and the finances of the Russian Federation…’

The simple fact is that Russia cannot restore its position as a World Power until it regains its financial sovereignty…

Starikov gives a very good overview of the reality of Russia’s ‘independent’ central bank in the first few pages…

Basically…Russia is operating today with its hands tied behind its back…and so is the US for that matter…as Nissani points out…

‘…As we have seen, we live now in an upside-down world of perpetual war, tyranny, injustice, materialism, selfishness, starvation, monstrous income inequalities, and ever-growing prospects of human extinction. But this, by itself, constitutes a paradox, because our planet can comfortably provide a decent life for every soul on it. The chaos and suffering must therefore be traced, at least in part, to our rulers…’

Yes the world is upside down…and there’s nothing that Putin or Trump can do about it until they seize back the levers of power from the global banking cabal…

Nothing can save the American empire from collapse at this point…and conversely…nothing can revive Russian global power either…as long as the situation remains as it is…Starikov reminds us…

‘…Because the system that the bankers came up with is against the laws of nature. Nothing disappears into nowhere and appears out of nothing in the world. Nature exists under the law of the conservation of energy. And the bankers decided to go against the fundamental principles of being. Money from nothing and wealth from nothing without labour is the shortest way to degradation and degeneration. And this is exactly what we witness today…’

Indeed…it is amazing to me that in the 21’st century we still do not understand the ABCs of our very existence…’Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it transforms from one form to another. For instance, chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy in the explosion of a stick of dynamite…’

Of course…I am here probably preaching to the choir…since many here bemoan the chokehold of the ‘Rothschilds…Rockefellers…Beliderbergs…etc…’…but Russia is now at a very important crossroads in terms of its revival…

One of the interesting revelations in Starikov is that even Stalin did not regain financial sovereignty until 15 years into his rule…Putin is now in his 18’th year of rule…how much longer do we need to wait…?

It is absolutely bizarre that the Russian central bank is beyond the grip of the nation’s government…Russia badly needs a program of massive economic stimulus into industry or else it will simply continue to stagnate…

I have mentioned this before but aside from general industry and infrastructure…the aerospace industry is absolutely the key to the future…for all advanced nations…

Yes Russia has been able to keep its space and military industry largely intact…but the civil aviation industry has vanished into thin air…

‘…Aerospace was a well-developed industry in the Soviet Union. In late 1980s, the Soviet Union accounted for 25% of the worldwide civilian and 40% of the worldwide military aircraft production.[3]…’

In 1989 Russia produced 715 civil aircraft that year…in 2013 total fixed-wing civil aircraft produced was 36…certainly a lot better than 2000…a year in which a total of 4 [four] civil aircraft were produced…

This is a case study of how the number one enemy of Russia…its own ‘central bank…is digging a grave for the country’s future…

Even Aeroflot has being buying foreign equipment for the last 25 years…why…?…because nobody will give them the money to buy Russian aircraft…

It is no secret that investing in industry…especially one as strategic as aerospace…is a case where investment brings a multiplier effect of economic benefits…greater employment…increased per capita income etc…higher standard of living…and on and on…

Yet we are supposed to believe that Russia’s central bank cannot print its own sovereign money to pay for such sorely needed investment…?

Every honest economist…of which there are very few…Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts for instance…will say…and have repeatedly said that this is nonsensical…

A sovereign country can print its own money to invest into industry…and the whole economy will grow…

Instead…the Russian central bank trickles out rubles based solely on the amount of US dollar reserves in its vaults

If your dollar income from selling oil or gas drops…so does your ability to invest in your aerospace industry…your country’s infrastructure…education…health…and everything else…

It is really a miracle that Russia has actually come as far as it has with both hands tied behind its back…

The question is…how much longer will VVP and surely other serious people in Russia tolerate this intolerable state of affairs…?

On the point (I don’t necessarily agree with every point, but core direction is absolutely right)! This is what anyone can see, who has healthy eyes. Because of so many different ideological reasons, people don’t want or are not able to see this. It’s obviously about power relationships and structure. Economic systems follow out of the power order.

The Russian Jurassic-park-style capitalism is a huge weakness, one that cannot be afforded to be tolerated by its people if they want to keep whats left of their country and hopefully reintegrate the Russian world once again.

At the time of the Battle of Tours in 732…where Martel brilliantly repelled the Caliphate expeditionary force…considered one of Europe’s most historically significant battles…the Arabs did have a heavy cavalry with stirrups…as well as a light cavalry of North African Berbers…

According to prevailing historical thought…the Arabs got the stirrup from the Byzantines…ie the Roman Empire…although the Roman Empire of antiquity did not have Stirrups…and in fact did relied much more on infantry than cavalry…

It is thought that the Avar invaders from Central Asia brought the stirrup to Europe around the sixth century…at which time it was adopted by the Romans [Byzantium if you must]…it had been in widespread use in China about the fourth century…and perhaps even earlier in India…

In any case…relating this somehow to the cultural discussion at hand…it is worth noting that even at the time of Isabella and Ferndinand’s reconquest of Grenada in the late 15’th century…the European culture of the time was centuries behind the declining Caliphate…with the renaissance just beginning in Italy…

So from a cultural perspective it is ludicrous to say now that the Franks and the other European tribes at the time somehow inherited the cultural mantle of Rome…

This is not by any means a straight line…

It is a case of the renaissance re-discovery of the cultural legacy of antiquity…mathematics, astronomy, literature etc…as passed down by its Arab and Byzantine stewards through the 1,000 years of the middle ages…

A Frankish or Gothic prince of the eighth century would have looked at you in total disbelief and incomprehension if you had mentioned any such thing as Roman law…the adoption of such ideas came much much later…

As far as I remember it was Napoleon who looked at Rome and based his code Napoleon on imperial Roman law. I don’t see anything roman during the dark middle ages. The renaissance was an elitist movement and had little impact on the lives of the common man. That had to wait for the Russian revolution .to bring some social justice in the form of socialism to western Europe. If you don’t believe me I will tell you the story of my grand parents .

“The stirrup was invented in China in the first few centuries C.E. and spread westward through the nomadic peoples of Central Eurasia. The use of paired stirrups is credited to the Chinese Jin Dynasty and came to Europe during the Middle Ages. Some argue that the stirrup was one of the basic tools used to create and spread modern civilization, possibly as important as the wheel or printing press”.
@https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup.

With regards to money and monetary policy.
The issue here is arithmetical and relates to the right to private property.
In a system where:
1 – Government imposes one unit of account by law 2 – Government bestows property of said unit of account to an unelected third party 3 – Irrespective of underlying economic conditions or political persuasion, succeeding incumbent governments run perpetual fiscal deficits
The diminishing marginal utility of debt ensures that the outcome is dialed in.
1,2 and 3 taken together guarantee that, eventually, government must face off against the people
1,2 and 3 however, also guarantee that shortly after taking on the people, governments will be fighting on 2 fronts: against the people and against the owners of the unit of account
This is an arithmetical identity
It does not matter whether a society opts to make use of stones, shells, gold or cabbages in designing a monetary system. The only thing that matters is whether the system is geared towards the distribution of wealth through the acquisition of private property or whether the system is geared towards the concentration of wealth through the concentration of title.
Because of the diminishing marginal utility of debt, 1,2 and 3 guarantee that the time differential between, on one hand, the generation of new money and credit and, on the other hand, the time it takes for this new money and credit to penetrate all levels of the economy, first users of the unit of account enjoy an asymmetrical purchasing power advantage over entities that get to use the same money and credit later in the cycle.
In time, this can only result in the concentration of title thus wealth, thus political power.
The diminishing marginal utility of debt results in gradually more onerous fiscal pressure.
Increasing fiscal pressure results in ever more stifling legislation.
Taken together, these 3 dynamics monopolize and raise barriers to entry in industry and business thereby inducing off-shoring which results in increasing unemployment.
In a context of electoral politics, politics have little to do with changing one’s quality of life.

I certainly see how communism can be perceived as an “import” from the russian pov. And the truth to it lies, very broadly speaking, on communism being a ideological reaction (with material consequences) to the capitalist system, quite undeveloped in Russia by the time it was promoted. It appeared in anticipation of what was to come not of what was effective. In this sense, it was indeed imported. Anachronic reaction in Russia as opposed to France.

Russia “skipped” the capitalist revolution against feudalism which was not the case in the west where capitalism took roots and exerted sufficient effect on the population to elicit more or less organized reactions, quelled more often than not for that matter. A good deal of the prevailing nostalgia for the soviet system in Russia can be explained precisely by this, where only the current capitalist development in Russia explains and makes obvious certain precedent soviet state measures.

This leads me to the point that communist ideology only acquires a national character post facto, being only as national to any culture as a given culture endures capitalism. Is capitalism “western”? in this world yes, so becomes consequent communism.

This is another way of saying that populations must appropriate themselves with the ideology/culture that allows emancipation from the material grievances of which they are local at a given social development, there can be no essential shortcuts at this level, so it appears by historical demonstration.

There is certainly a tension between the following, but it seems to me: despite the above and all current difficulties, Russia today is yet much better prepared to assert its position on the world in face of the auto-phagic global capitalist trend given exactly its soviet past and cultural heritage than any western social-democracy could possibly provide, as capitalist methods of enforcement are: under experienced but unmasked in the former vs experienced but still object of illusion in the latter.

I think Western aggression against Russia cannot be denied. And russophobia has been relentlessly cultivated by Western propaganda machines.

Where I disagree with Saker is in the supposition that Russia kind of “skipped” the Middle Ages. I should first make it clear that I don’t use the term “Middle Ages” in any pejorative sense whatsoever, I don’t consider it necessarily a more horrible time for the majority of people than the Roman times or than the centuries that followed, and that’s why I never use the term “Dark Ages” which I consider extremely silly.

As a matter of fact, it seems to me that the way Russian society was organized until very recently (until the 20th century) was in many ways very similar to the way western societies were organized during the Middle Ages. Peasant-feudal-agrarian societies, where people belonged to the land and the Church played a very central role. So I can’t see in what sense Russia skipped all that.

Here I have mixed feelings. I do agree that in many ways the Middle Ages were not all “dark”, especially compared to the 20th century, but for the purpose of my article I did decide to use the term “dark” to stress the lack of continuity between Roma and the modern West: those 1000 years pretty much wiped out most of what was left behind by Rome.

” Russian society was organized until very recently (until the 20th century) was in many ways very similar to the way western societies were organized during the Middle Ages. Peasant-feudal-agrarian societies, where people belonged to the land and the Church played a very central role. So I can’t see in what sense Russia skipped all that.”

Feudalism and serfdom were important to Russia from the West. As for the Russian Church, she had a dramatically different role than in the West, especially prior to 1666. Yes, there are external similarities, but internally these are very different phenomena.

Actually, “classical” Rome and Greece were essentially technologically stagnant, and for the most part, philosophically, as well. The European medieval period, while similarly philosophically stagnant, was actually a period of technological progress. Not fast progress, like during the renaissance, but steady advance in many ways.

This was due mainly to the move away from slavery, and the much more chaotic and disorganized nature of the way government (power) was organized in Europe.

Saker,
exccellent, thought provoking article and so many excellent comments – it is amazing how much one can learn from blogs like yours, Sir. (how long will this freedom last?).
Anyway, my comment is about Leo Tolstoy – his biographer Henri Troyat says, if I remember correctly, that he was against the ´westernization´of russian life and culture, and that his feud with Turgenev was about this, he saw Turgenev as a ´westernizer´.. How would you characterize Tolstoy´s mind in the Russian Life ?

“But the western elites had no use for a partner or an ally, what they wanted was a compliant slave. Vladimir Putin has made it quite clear that he has no such plans at all.”

I consider the above among the most astute observations you have made in your commentary.

But there are, unfortunately and perhaps necessarily, a few aspects of your analysis which I would like to agree with, but at this stage I cannot. For example, I suspect that perhaps you have not paid enough respect to the Russian proletariat by dismissing communism and, as a result, Leninism, as an entirely Western package of ideas. Really? Maybe Russian workers who tried to take some control of their miserable lives under the Tsar were not necessarily the victims of Western ideology. Maybe the socialist/communist impulse was to some extent genuinely Russian. Anyhow, I hope you could clarify this point.

As for the Russian identity and “idiosyncrasy”, I would argue that the Russians are quite different from the Anglo-Saxons, for example, because culturally they have still retained their essential Slavic identity, as you indicated but not really explained well enough for me. When I meet a Russian, I usually can easily and quickly establish a natural affinity, even if we don’t know much about each other. This is because, being Polish, I am also Slavic. (Needless to say, we both speak Slavic languages, which are so similar that I can understand about 50% of spoken Russian, even though my knowledge of it is minimal.)

I would also argue that the Catholic version of Christianity has been much more destructive to Polish Slavic cultural identity than Orthodox Christianity has been to the Russian one. This is perhaps why, there are more Slavic Russians today than there are any other Slavs in Europe. (Interestingly, the neo-Slavic awakening continues to grow, Russia claiming over a million of what are called “neo-Pagans”.)

By the way: I consider Catholicism the worst enemy of Polish cultural heritage and national identity and of what I could call genuine Polishness”. Like the most famous Polish Slavic philosopher, Jan Stachniuk, I think Catholicism has created a morally inferior and politically naïve type of a Pole, which he calls “polakatolik,” a pathetic blend of the worst in Catholicism and of what was not nice in traditional Polish culture.

Looking forward to your continued discussion of the very important topic, because Russia “suddenly” has become a resurgent political and military power that will, it seems, never surrender its sovereignty to American or any other imperialism.

Vot tak, I must tell you: I was tempted to say exactly the same thing, and I was prepared to explain very extensively why. But I didn’t want to stray off the topic and be shut off. Perhaps there will be another opportunity. Take care, Amigo. You’ve made my day. I am not alone.

Poles are a people who have been alienated by the foreign church from their very language.
The natural alphabet for any Slavic language is Cyrillic. Something I acutely experience when I try to write to Russian friends, in Russian, using the Roman Alphabet.
It is a gut-wrenching and deeply alienating experience.

What a nonsense, a „natural alphabet”… If there is one, it should probably be „nature-like” (pictorial) and if it is or was, it has quickly developed into a „wrenching” sign script like Chinese, or Sumerian cuneiform writing or Old Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. For us Western/Nordics it would have to be Runic, or what?

Modern writing using graphic representations of minimal units of of language (letters for sounds) is always artificial, and hundreds of systems exist/ed which were/are powerful once learned. The „natural” way to „get“ them is to go to school, to those which exist or existed when these scripts were created. In Western Europe (culturally colonized by the emissaries of the Vatican, monks) this script was always Latin, in Poland as in Bohemia, Hungary, Germany, France etc. The script designers of that time understood to modify the basic Latin script (primitive angloamerican ASCII) to well represent the particular sounds of the particular language – and thus Polish, Czech and Hungarian are – in stark contrast to culturally less developed countries like Germany or England – completely consistent in their writing: once you learned it you know the exact pronounciation from the writing and the exact writing from the pronounciation. The only (and severely) alienating thing in these systems is that while the territory was unified (from the vaticani teacher‘s perspective), the unity of the script system was willfully sabotaged by inventing different modifying methods for each language. Thus the vaticani monks taught the Poles to write the (english) /s/ sound as „s“ and the /sh/ sound as „sz“ – and the Hungarians to write /s/ as „sz“ and /sh/ as „s“… what a wrenching and malicious babelesque nonsense! How charming then when two such nations are thrown together under one ruler (as was the case for PL and HU for a while), or when we modern nomads have to learn one new script system for each new Ryanair destination.

When you, oh Franz, engage in the absolutely unnatural perversion of trying to write Russian in Dumb US ASCII, you have only yourself to blame for the terrible after effects. Bright leaders of a cute nation would decide themselves how their language has to be „correctly“ represented in other script systems, e.g. Stupid Yankee ASCII. This is what the Chinese authorities did with having ONE transcription system developed (pinyin) AND then stick to it and encourage the rest of the world to use it, too. The Russian authorities, since using the „cyrillic” script system developed by not a Russian but Greek monk (either Kyrill or Method, the other having invented the absurd alternative „glagolitic” system used for many centuries in Western Slavic regions), to this day did not give a damn how their language looks in DumbUSabc, and so the „natural“ way of Western readers getting acquainted with Russian names is a grotesque mixture of everyone‘s imagination that supports the notion that them Russkies are „natural“ caveman who know nothing and don‘t care for anything, and by extension, the idea that it would be easy, dulce at decorum to „have a fast one on them“.

The Cyrillic alphabet is an elegant solution to the problems posed by Slavic phonemes trying to find equivalents in the Roman Alphabet. The unfortunate Poles sometimes have to use five letters to reproduce one or two Cyrillic letter/sounds. In fact Polish pronunciation too, has no doubt been hybridized by the unnatural and inelegant use of foreign Roman letters, which had been invented to render Latin sounds. As for Cyril and Methodius: “Their father, Leon, was Drungarios of the Byzantine Roman Thema of Thessalonika, whose jurisdiction included the Slavs of Macedonia. Their mother is believed to have been Slavic. Being raised in an area with both Greek and Slavic speakers endowed the brothers with a good knowledge of the two languages. As befitting their family’s position, they were well educated.” – Orthodox Wiki
So trying to make them ‘Greek’ is a foolish and thankless task. And Glagolitic is simply an experimental and earlier form of what, when perfected, became Cyrillic. Have you ever tried inventing a language. It is probably not that easy.
Still, I strangely enjoyed your windy rant.
Could it have been averted entirely if I had used the word ‘elegant’ or ‘organic’ rather than the word I did use: ‘natural’?

For the life of me I don’t see how mentioning them would be relevant to my article. Besides, I did say that for the Baltic states “the Russian plan for these countries is simple: simply buy the Baltics states”. That is exactly what is going to happen. While the locals rejoice in SS parades, Russian businessmen will gradually buy their way into controlling these three republics as the objective gravitational pull of Russia is simply too big to be broken by such tiny and, frankly, mostly useless (to the rest of the world) entities. Right now the West is pretending to need them just to have somebody local freak out about the Russian threat, but as soon as this hysterias dies down they will be dumped by their western “friends” like used toilet paper…

As for the local Russians, those who stayed, they have become very smart about how to deal with the local nationalists and with time they will only gain more and more political power. Again, this is an objective process, not even a “policy” to be honest.

Great thoughts. Unique leaders’ problem, reminds me of the same issue in Castro’s Cuba, Chavez’s Venezuela and, certainly, Cristina’s Argentina. How to clone popularity, courage, talent and determination among several people that also would coincide in the backbone of a national project.

For me, Putin is likable and has a good sense of humor, but I don’t think he is ‘charismatic’ as such. Trump is charismatic — ‘yarka’, or colorful — but Putin is very competent, listens to people, honest, no-nonsense, smart, mature, and shows he really cares about Russia, the people, and doing a good job. What’s not to like?
Trump is great fun to listen to, but I can’t take what he says seriously, and there is a lot not to like abut him. He’s a ‘Wrestlemania’ character.

I listen to Putin’s speeches and conferences, and I want to hear what he has to say because he knows what he is talking about, looking for solutions, and is authentic — just the opposite of US and EU politicians (which is probably why they get so confused about him). Putin really is a man of the people, and very ‘Russian’, and human. Lavrov, and the other top leaders are much like that too.

Russian leaders don’t have gimmicks or magic tricks — they are simply very competent and professional. When Putin attributed the ‘no’ quote to the wrong president it was a bit shocking because even a trivial error like that is so rare — again, the opposite of US and EU child-idiot leaders. I get the impression that this is a normal part of the Russian character and values.

My God, Saker, the long waiting for your next article really worth it this time. I mean, I am fascinated how you just put in writing such a valuable and historical Russian perspective. Putin, like Hugo Chaves in Venezuela represents the incarnation of his people. He truly represents them and if anything would happen to him, I am afraid it could happen just like in Venezuela, where all the 14 years of progress was followed by a period of chaos after Chaves’ death. I really value every statement you have made here. Un abrazo amigo.

This is an enlightening synopsis; and a demonstration why this is an indispensible website, along with its founder and driving force: The Saker.

On a small scale, this website is also wobbly, because it stands upon the wisdom and articulation of its founder. In this sense, it is like Putin’s Russia.

I see in Shoigu, Lavrov, and Kadyrov the makings of a truimvirate. I don’t know Russia well enough to name others. But, if there could come together a council of wise and powerful men -5 to 7 in number- like the Genro of post-Meiji Japan, there could be away for Russia, as Putin imagines it, to continue beyond his time.

I found my way here from a Conservative Treehouse link and I’m glad I did. A very insightful look into the soul of Russia.

I was curious about the Poles/Balts comment in which you determined they are “psychotic.” The woman on the balcony illustration made the point hilariously. But I lived in Lithuania for two school terms, teaching at a university (a very Western one). I did not find the Lithuanians psychotic at all. They were definitely crushed by the Soviet years but it made them silent and somewhat passive.

Your point here though did make me reconsider my views. It had never occurred to me that the Russian people were also brutalized by the Soviet “experiment.” I taught many Russian students in my time there as well and this makes me see them in a new light.

“Contrary to the official historical narrative, the current Western civilization has never had any root into the Roman Empire, and even less so, the Greek antiquity. The true founders of the ‘Western world’ were, in so many ways, the Franks”

Beg to differ with regard to the denial of the West’s roots in the Roman Empire. These roots are deep and profound if for another reason which, thus far, no one in this thread seems to have addressed at all, surprisingly enough:

It is precisely this deranged, psychotic, filthy, and decadent addiction — not least culturally — to conquest, enslavement, rape, and all-out hedonism which Rome has passed on to the West, more so now than ever before. Bread and circus as a means to breed a docile, well-off, and morally, ahem, compromised home constituency defending “the Roman/Western way of life” is striking as the common fabric of society in both cases. Ironically, chauvinist people such as the Poles, for all their Catholic backwardness and bigotry, don’t really convince as claimants to “the great and glorious Roman civilization” as they perceive it (or, rather, pretend). The Euro-trash and the Pindos, by contrast, convince very much in this regard.

“But the Western elites had no use for a partner or an ally, what they wanted was a compliant slave. Vladimir Putin has made it quite clear that he has no such plans at all”

Very true. And that applies with special vigour to vast regions of untapped natural resources. Western imperialism will keep screaming and yelling at Russia until either the West or Russia implodes. Donald Trump and, more ominously, Rex Tillerson understand this. I fear Putin and Lavrov are taking a huge risk with regard to Russia’s Arctic wealth.

Geopolitics defines the future of Russia, Germany, China, Romania, Serbia, Finland etc. It’s genes, DNA of nations. There will be weak and strong leaders for Russia also in future. The reason why i appreciate Putin is that he has made Russia much “faster” and flexible compared sluggy days of Breznev. In many ways USA has become ridiculed for its stupid, stagnated, bragging but clumsy behavior. Putin’s Russia while still too weak is fast and strong enough in strongpoint while USA being everywhere has divided strength and is not really strong anywhere. USA is Breznev of our time.

Seven Laws of Noah : an emanation of the Judeosphere’s Terror Merchants

Saker : The crux of your latest article is the current fragility of Russia whose independence hinges essentially upon Vladimir Putin’s personal vigilance and charisma, as well as upon the quasi-monarchical rôle he and his party ‘United Russia’ play in fending off a hostile world run by the Atlanticists and his own Fifth Column.

The Anglo-Zionist policy of containment signifies ever more NATO boots on the ground in the Baltic states, Ukraine and parts of Syria, as Israeli warplanes bearing Jewish insignia – the Star of David – in Hebrew – the Shield of David or Magen David (מָגֵן דָּוִד) – seek to provoke a direct military confrontation with Russia and its allies by repeated air strikes on targets deep inside sovereign Syrian territory. These sorties are carried out in support of the headchoppers affiliated to hydra-headed organisations of terrorist mercenaries – formerly called al-Nusra Front, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Al-Qaeda in the Levant – tagged with an Arabic acronym Hetesh (هتش).

Hailing from the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in the illegal settlement of Yitzhar, south of Nablus in the Occupied Territories, Torat Hamelech or the King’s Torah (התורה של המלך) provides a recipe for settler violence and much much more. Having studied the subject for several years, as I understand the issues – primarily as a Gentile – it seems appropriate for me to add my two cents worth by way of context and enlightenment about a cult figure who is popularly referred to as the Rebbe and whose partisans – called Lubavitchers or Chabadniks – draw their beliefs from doctrines inspired by the Babylonian Talmud and other classical works of Rabbinical Judaism.

These give prominence to apocalyptic redemption, for which they hope and pray, so as to pave the way for world government managed under auspices of a distinctly Jewish flavoured theocracy. Here we behold the religious and political guru of messianic Israeli prime ministers Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon and of senior US functionaries such as Paul Wolfowitz, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Senator and retired General Carl Levin, Michael Chertoff, Orthodox Jewish rabbi Dov Zakheim. People whose official and unofficial actions link them to game-changing events like 9/11 and the invasions of Iraq, Syria etc. Neither can we overlook the precepts of a would-be spiritual leader whose life was spent teaching his followers to differentiate racially or religiously between Jews and non-Jews, between Jewish embryos and non-Jewish embryos etc. I kid you not.

Moreover at his behest, during the month of March 1991, a mind boggling piece of subterfuge was enacted in Washington DC. Public Law 102-14 remains to this day enforceable as American federal law.

Unbeknown to the vast majority of US citizens, but available for consultation at the US Library of Congress, this statute declares that the “Seven Noahide Laws” (from the Jewish Babylonian Talmud) are the principles upon which the USA was founded, and that it is America’s responsibility to transmit these “ethical values” to future generations in the United States and the world. Regarding these so-called “ethical values”, for your information, the Seven Noahide Laws set up a two-tier judiciary, one for Jews and one for non-Jews.

For example, under the section “Laws Before Sinai”, one learns that, with few exceptions, the breaking or transgression of the Noahide Laws is punishable by death by decapitation. Blasphemy, idolatry, adultery fall into this category. Furthermore a Jew may rob, rape or kill a Gentile with impunity. But woe betide the hapless,
blasphemous or adulterous Gentile or the non-Jew accused of slaying, despoiling or sexually aggressing a Jew.

If, having returned from his. semi-confidential trip abroad, the Saker cares to read and post my article entitled Seven Laws of Noah : an emanation of the Judeosphere’s Terror Merchants which I have just emailed him, his readers will also be able to discover the extent to which we are all now Palestinians in the eyes of the neuro-pirates and social engineers who have taken upon themselves the task of indoctrinating the masses.

Hence for them the urgency of closing down the Internet. One reason for this being the freedom of thought and expression which permitted me to learn what I now know about this vexed subject, after reading an article dated 2013, written and researched by political scientist Pierre Hillard, a staunch defender of national sovereignty :

«This noachism is becoming an increasingly important feature of our cognitive architecture. Thus, the United States Congress adopted, within the framework of “Education Day”, on 26 March 1991, the recognition of the noachid laws as the foundation of American society. It would seem that things are speeding up. Effectively, on September 23, 2012, all of the world’s Jewish communities called – in a short prayer – for the arrival of the Messiah (Mashiach). For Catholics this is tantamount to summoning up the Antichrist. Considering the decay of the Church in the wake of Vatican II, this prayer bespeaks a craving for a radical transformation. Evidently globalism is a messianism that is now truly pressed for time». Source : a translated extract from : Connaissez-vous le noachisme ? http://www.bvoltaire.fr/connaissez-vous-le-noachisme/ by Pierre Hillard 10 March 2013.

While the author speaks unabashedly from a French Catholic viewpoint, the implications concern effectively Jewish and non-Jewish people alike, seeing as the vast majority of them haven’t the foggiest idea of what the observance of the Seven Laws of Noah would actually signify for them and their kith and kin. The sentiment generally is that people everywhere have less and less oversight regarding the most crucial decisions which affect everyday realities and the most intimate aspects our being whether at a biological or a cultural level.

NB The Rebbe’s children have even infiltrated the Kremlin in the person of Shalom Dovber Pinchas Lazar. Hopefully Vladimir knows how to keep his Chief Rabbi on a short leash … All the best … TMWNS.

Well, it tells you that Trump knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t it? Exactly the same goes for Putin. That’s probably also the reason both were able to slip under the radar in the first place. They both definitely weren’t supposed to become president, no matter what some disinfo agents and their simpleton followers say. No wonder this rabidly anti-Christian, anti-American (Satanist) law was enacted under the (Ashke-) Nazi monster GHW Bush.

“Russia, of course, has exactly zero need for more land, and even less need for the rabidly hostile and frankly psychotic populations of these countries. /…/ From a Russian point of view, these countries and peoples are not coveted prizes but useless liabilities.”

Precisely. Put bluntly, already the Euro-trash — the “real” deal — is total rubbish by any meaningful standards, unless the Russian people suddenly should start yearning badly for some zio-gay identity courtesy of George Soros. Judging by the fate of the Pussy Riot harridans, this doesn’t seem very likely at present.

The morbid hallucinations of the honorary Euro-trash such as Polaks, Balts, and Ukros are barely worth even contempt or ridicule. But they do confirm the correctness of the Soviet view that bourgeois ideology amounts to mental illness, and how!

Except the expression THE WEST is utterly useless and obfuscating. Europe and the Americas are bankster occupied territories.

When we say ‘the West’ – and I guess 90% of us here are natives of Western nations – we unwittingly implicate ourselves in the crimes of our overlords, as we do when we go along with the ‘human caused global warming’ hoax.

I don’t agree. Granted, like any other ideological tripe, a political concept such as “West” is flat-out nonsense, in vivid contrast to “North” and “South”. The planet has no West or East poles, so framing part of current world affairs as an “East/West” dichotomy is just following a silly naming convention of unmistakeable European trash science.

But that is precisely the reason why we should stick to the Zionazi concepts. If the Zionazis and their hired psychobabblers like to pontificate about “The West” and its “values”, then we’ve got every good reason conceivable to make use of their verbiage too — with utmost disdain and Schadenfreude, that is.

I usually frame ‘The West’ in single quotes. The ‘so-called West’ or ‘self-confessed West’ seem a bit too cumbersome.
More importantly, in Western religion, as formulated in the Wizard of Oz, ‘The West’ is the domain of the Wicked Witch of the West, who, apparently is not yet quite dead.
So perhaps The Land of the Wicked Witch would be a positive and recognizable substitute for the easily-mistaken-for-neutral, The West.

“No, seriously, Rome was not about laws, languages, roads, symbols or buildings”
——-
It wasn’t? Ok. It would be helpful if you illustrate what in your opinion Rome “was about”. If a legal system is not at the core of what a society is about, please tell us what is. And what caused the germanic tribes to adopt the culture (including legal systems) of the lands they occupied? And why do you think the Christian and the Muslim cultures never really mixed during nearly 800 years of Muslim presence in Spain? In spite of mutual influences, they wer always completely distinct societies, governd by very different rules through all those centuries. They were spectacularly unable to merge into one society after 800 years. Do you think the total incompatibility of their respective legal systems had anything to do with this failure to merge? Please observe the behaviour of oil and water in the same container.

Above all, please do enlighten us of what the Roman world was about, if it was not about a legal system, language and culture in general? And please illustrate how a Russian hamlet in the year, say, 1000, resembled life in the Roman Empire more than a hamlet in, say, France or Spain or Italy? In my opinion, and with the utmost respect, I insist you are here treading on purely nonsensical territory. You should listen to the sound of your steps. You are on very fluffy and marshy grounds. Step back and reconsider your itinerary.

Why the christians and muslims did not merge into one is precisely because of the legal system….the islamic legal system.

In Islamic law each religious community has the right to have their own courts. Therefore christians can decide to go to a christian court for resolvlng disputes, and they have the choice of going yo a muslim court.

This helped preserve religious harmony in the community. We do need to realise that the Islamic Empire at its peak was a true beacon for its times. Unfortunately the muslims of today do not realise their own history, nor do they know their legal systems. Andalus was one of the great examples of the tolerance within the Islamic Empire.

I recommend to read Dario Fernandez-Morera’s “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain”, in which he dismantles this most cherished politically correct delusion of al-Andalus, as a successful multicultural society in which Christians, Jews and Muslims flourished together beneath the tolerant eye of enlightened Islamic rulers. The myth of al-Andalus was constructed around the denunciation of the Inquisition and of the Christian heritage of Roman Spain as the font of anti-Semitism and precursor of the ‘holocaust’. The Jews were indeed privileged in al-Andalus, where they closely collaborated in the exploitation of the Christian ‘dhimmis’ (as everywhere in the Islamic Empire). Had Moorish Spain been that ‘paradise’ we would be hardly pressed to explain the centuries old struggle of Christians to ‘reconquer’ their Spain. The ‘Reconquista’ was the first Crusade (a dirty curse word in the Islam-politically-correct parlance). Spain became the object of the intense hatred of the underhand alliance of Jews, Muslims, Protestants, which grew after the liberation of Spain and was taken over later by the ‘Left’.

I am not a Russophile, but I have come to a rather ‘simplistic’ conclusion which is:
Western Christendom is composed mainly of – Orthodox Christians and the ‘others’.
It is unfortunate but I can’t help but draw the conclusion that the ‘others’ are equivalent in the Muslim world, to the Sunni and ‘Orthodox Christians’ are the equivalent of the Shiite…hence the prevailing attitudes in the ‘other’ Western Christians.
I would be interested to know if non-western Christians have the same view – I think not!
These comments are not meant to be offensive but are made to interpret the attitudes prevailing in Western Christendom.
By the way you have a good articile.
Contrarian

Spain was Roman since 218 BC! Three of the greatest Roman Emperors were from Hispania: Trajan, Hadrian, Theodosius.
The Visigoths ruled Hispania as Roman commissioners until 711. But Spain remained at the forefront of the fight against Islam.

“The morbid hallucinations of the honorary Euro-trash such as Polaks, Balts, and Ukros are barely worth even contempt or ridicule. But they do confirm the correctness of the Soviet view that bourgeois ideology amounts to mental illness, and how!”

A brilliant article – well done. BUT you are too hard on Gorbachev. And Russia did not defeat Napoleonic Europe on its own – Britain helped more than a little!! That is why in the great St George’s Hall in the kremlin there is listed the Duke of Wellington as recipient of the St George’s Medal – first class!

While it is true that Britain fought Napoleon probably longer than anyone.What they had managed to do was “contain” him. There is a similarity with WWII and Hitler. They kept Napoleon contained on the Continent. But didn’t have the forces to actually defeat him.In the long run,most likely, Napoleon would have come out the winner. Especially had he defeated Russia and gained the control there he had over his other enemies in Europe that bowed down to him.It took the massive defeat he suffered in Russia to break his armies. And that defeat ,coupled with Russian forces going after him into Central Europe. Which got the others (Austria and Prussia in particular) to revolt and join the Russians “for the final kill”. The Russian armies returned to Russia after Napoleons defeat. And so when he returned,weakened,and with nothing like the armies he had before. Britain and Prussia were able to finish him off with the Waterloo battle.But make no mistake. It was (as in WWII as well) the Russians who were responsible for the end of the Napoleonic Empire.As to Wellington getting a medal from the Russians.That isn’t surprising at all.In that period (now as well) friendly allied commanders were given medals by their allies. It was/is a form of military courtesy between allies.

Фланкербандит on April 01, 2017 · at 6:22 pm UTC
“the Iberian peninsula had been under the rule of the Omayyad Caliphate [Damascus] already for nearly 100 years

…and would remain so for another nearly 700 years…until Grenada was finally ‘reconquered’ in 1492”
———————–

That’s wrong. Only a diminishing fraction of the Iberian peninsula was under the rule of the Caliphate for that lenght of time.

The muslims entered the Iberian peninsula in 711. By 720 the controled it entirely. Christian push back began as early as 724 in Asturias, in the North. By 750 a large swath in the northwest of the peninsula (Asturias and Galicia) was no longer under Muslim control. By 1140 about half the peninsula had been retaken by Christians. By 1270 only Granada (abut 7% of the peninsula) remained under muslim control.

Here is a useful interactive world history map you can play with. Zoom in on the iberian peninsula and check any date or use the double arrows to move back and forth in 10 or 100 year increments. This is how it looks like by 1265

> Add to this that Russians have a long history of good leaders succeeded by mediocre ones

I came to thinking that this is like a nature law.
A “good leader” i the one, who sets the goals and achieves them.

In so vast and different land the Russia is, it means suppressing opposition, to jump over the endless quagmire of bargaining.
In the end we truly have an authoritative if not autocrative ruler, who constructs himself a hi-efficiency custom-tailored controlling system. Those are two key features of it: highly efficient in suppressing inner sabotage and diversions, while custom-tailored to the personality of the ruler. It gives an ultimate, unmatched efficiency to his power. This also means no one else there fits this system. Everyone else falls short off his efficiency when trying walking his custom-tailored shoes.
There is no second Putin, because, well, the system is getting made to suit Putin’s personality. Like a good dress.

However one day he dies, Putin, or Stalin, or Peter the 1st, or Ivan the 4th, they all died, but the system remained, and got inherited by the next ruler. The ruler who was not custom-tailored to this control system, but who inherited it with its immense suppress-and-enforce characteristic.

Now the system still worked with unique efficiency, just the non-matching leader steered it to some wrong, slipper slope way. The system that previous leader used t build Russia, now with the same full capacity was used to destroy Russia.

No offense Saker, but your premise that ” current western civilization has never had any root into the Roman Empire, and even less so, Greek antiquity” is nonsense. Western civilization evolved through the influence of ancient cultures: the main ones being Greek and Roman. The influence by Greece can be traced to its golden age, and Rome from its great Empire and Republic. Ancient Rome formed the law code used in the present time in many countries. The belief that a person is innocent until proven guilty originated from the Roman laws. Rome had its senate just like the ones used today, with both upper and lower houses. Your prejudicial and silly notion that the Catholic Church has no, or little, connection to the Roman Empire, is well ….

I am afraid it is not but the Großherzogtum Kleve und Berg with the capital of Düsseldorf, so in Northern Germany , west of the Rhine, with Holland as Neighbour. „Wirttemberg“ is also present in the inscription.

I haven’t yet read all the comments (looking forward to that) and I admire Saker for the coherence of his point of view, but as with any analysis there will be important aspects either glossed over or left out, and to me while it can’t be denied that the Western influence upon Russia was overwhelmingly one of “shock and awe” – as was the Tatar influence for the years in which that stream of culture flowed into and surrounded early Russian cities – there was an equally important (my claim) flow of what was being born in the west creatively speaking, from which Russia benefited. The unique aspect of Russia that I see is that she has assimilated both streams of positive flow – and Putin often refers to both, as does Lavrov.

The West is not entirely crap culture, oligarchical rule, and bombs. It is also the Magna Carta and Shakespeare and polyphonic music. And it is the beautiful aspects of St. Petersburg – memory eternal and a return to health for the latest victims of violence in that lovely city.

Russia absorbs and transfigures all cultures into its own. It is all the great Russian writers from Gogol and Dostoievski to Pasternak. It is the incredible music of the Russian church which won my heart, the icons most forcibly painted during and after the rule of the Golden Horde. It is the most glorious music ever written, because of this absorption, because of this transfiguration. There is a Russia at the heart of it, to be sure, but the glory is and has to be the welcoming in of what is fine, beautiful, and best. From the west as well as from the east.

That is why the current western leaders hate Putin – because he tells them to look at their own roots! And he’s right. Lavrov does it too – he strips the ideologies and says – there are two kinds, people of a neoliberal persuasion who want to use other people for their own aggrandizement – and the rest of us!

Here we are in the week of the great Saint Mary of Egypt, right before that beginning of Holy Week that is called Palm Sunday in the West and the Entry into Jerusalem in the Eastern church. And this year they are on the same day, which doesn’t always happen. And here’s how one of the final verses of the Easter Canon goes:

O Zion, look around/ Behold the return of your children/ From West and North/ From the seas and from the East/ They come like stars guided by God/ Blessing Christ who dwells in you// For ever and ever.

Russian monasterial chant is beautiful. But polyphonic music came from the West. We wouldn’t have Tchaikovski, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky without it.

You see, what Russia has to tell us – from her most bitter experiences – is this:

Except a seed falls to the ground and dies
It remains alone
But if it dies
It brings forth much fruit.

As I see it, the future of Russia lies within all of Russia, not any particular region as there’s so much to do most everywhere. The East to West geographical center of Russia lies about Krasnoyarsk. Given Russia’s current economic direction. Russia’s future would be South of that center where a third of humanity dwells. IMO, geographically the construct known as Europe makes no sense, while that of the entire Eurasian landmass does. It would seem Russia’s been involved in something similar to Hesse’s Journey to the East and is now awakening from its own crisis in Morbio Inferiore as its people gain confidence moving forward.

As for the vagaries of history, it would be great for all the history prof wannabes to gather in a seminar for a semester to argue and explore their differing hypotheses of just what/how happened over the past 3000 years. Or perhaps we should go even further back to “Noah’s Flood”–the filling of the Black Sea–for that certainly strewed peoples, their ideologies and technologies in vastly different directions in ways still affecting us today. The place to begin is with this book: Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History.

Firstly you calssify Soviet Russia as an “Westernizer experiment” in the tradition of the last Tsars, at least since the Great Synod of Moscow. Then you say that “the West fears Russia now, once it is becaming Russian again”.

So if USSR was not “Russian Russia”, therefore West was not afraid of it… how it can be? West was bombing its audience with Anti-Soviet propaganda, sponsored coups d’Ett and disestablizing movment around the whole world because the sole reason of “limiting Soviet influence”, occupied all Western Europe and engaged itself in a mad “weapon-race” spending a large budget in weapons to stop USSR.

So “Russian Russia” or not, USS was quite frightening the West. In my opinion, the scare for Russia has not reached the top after 1999…

Putin does not rule alone. Yes, he makes maybe alone the strategic decisions but in a modern and as extended as Russia is it is absolutely impossible to rule alone without a steady team. We know that Putin, ie the federal state, gave large autonomy in favour of the governors in exchange of loyalty. Moreover it is very probable that Putin and his team have already chosen a potential successor in case of Putin would swiftly disappear.

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